At a special Nov.16 workshop held in Brussels, 13 Nations agreed to seek significant cost-savings through the joint procurement of C-IED technology, officials said.
The NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A)–NATO’s advanced technology arm–has been mandated to come up with specific options in five areas: detection, jammers, route clearance packages, dismounted operations and infrastructure protection.
NC3A officials said the joint approach will allow Nations to benefit from savings of 15 percent or more.
“When Nations pool orders they are able to benefit from lower unit prices, while for Industry the transaction costs are lower, so it is very much a win-win approach,” said Franco Fiore of NC3A. “When we applied a similar approach to friendly force tracking, the order of savings was in the high millions of Euros.”
The projects are due to begin in 2011.
“In support of NATO’s C-IED Action Plan we are looking at significantly ramping up multinational cooperation, including joint procurement,” said Ludwig Decamps from NATO’s Defence Investment Division, in a statement. “Experience tells us that multinational cooperation does not happen by default; in the coming months we will engage Allies and Partners in a substantive debate to identify projects that can deliver operational benefits and economies of scale.”
The results of the workshop will be briefed to NATO’s Conference of National Armaments Directors.
“At the time of this briefing, some 59 percent of our casualties are the result of IEDs. Getting more capabilities out to our troops and doing it in a efficient, effective manner, is a matter of urgency,” said NC3A Deputy General Manager Kevin Scheid in his opening address.
“This will not be a ‘one-size fits all’ approach. Nations will have the option to pick and choose which packages and items are of specific interest to them,” Fiore said.
NC3A has a long track-record in delivering advanced C-IED technologies to protect NATO’s bases in Afghanistan. NATO Nations have also benefitted previously from the Agency’s services in obtaining economies of scale through joint multinational acquisition of cyber defences and friendly force tracking technologies, the agency said. At NC3A, multinational projects are led by the Directorate Sponsor Account NATO and Nations, focused on bilateral and multilateral support and cooperation with Nations and organizations.
The nations participating in the workshop were NATO members Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, United Kingdom, and the United States; Partner countries Russia and Sweden; as well as representatives of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, Joint Force Command Brunssum, NATO’s Military Engineering Centre of Excellence in Germany, the EOD Centre of Excellence in Slovakia and NATO’s logistics agency, NAMSA