Centres of Excellence (COEs) are international military organisations that train and educate leaders and specialists from NATO member and partner countries. They assist in doctrine development, identify lessons learned, improve interoperability and capabilities, and test and validate concepts through experimentation. They offer recognised expertise and experience that is of benefit to the Alliance, and support the transformation of NATO, while avoiding the duplication of assets, resources and capabilities already present within the Alliance.
NATO Integrated Air and Missile Defence (NATO IAMD) is a continuous and essential mission across peacetime, crisis, and conflict. It safeguards and protects Alliance populations and forces against air and missile threats and attacks. NATO IAMD contributes to deterrence, reassurance of Allies, and supports the Alliance’s indivisible security and freedom of action
NATO IAMD constitutes the defensive component of NATO’s Joint Air Power, aiming to ensure the stability and security of NATO Nations airspace by coordinating, controlling, and exploiting the air domain. It encompasses all measures to deter, defend against, and, when necessary, defeat air and missile threats, while reducing the effectiveness of hostile air actions.
NATO IAMD addresses a wide spectrum of threats from state and non-state actors, including small, low- and slow-flying unmanned aerial systems (UAS), cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, including hypersonic and other threats that may be chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN), electromagnetic, or cyber in nature.
It provides a highly responsive, robust, time-critical, and persistent capability to achieve the desired level of control of the air, enabling the Alliance to conduct the full range of its missions. NATO IAMD is implemented through the NATO Integrated Air Defence System (NATINAMDS), a network of interconnected national and NATO systems comprising sensors, command and control facilities, and weapon systems.
NATINAMDS operates under the authority of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), ensuring timely and agile deployment and employment across the Alliance, particularly on its Eastern flank, in accordance with the 360-degree approach.
IAMD COE strives to support, inter alia, NATO’s efforts to achieve Cognitive Superiority considering the increasingly diverse and challenging air and missile threats ranging from UAVs to sophisticated hypersonic missiles. As NATO IAMD remains key for credible deterrence and defence, to maximize commanders’ ability to anticipate, think, decide, and act, our COE puts an emphasis on IAMD integration to Multi-Domain Operations, mainly exploring emerging and disruptive technologies to support warfighting. On such endeavor, not only we capitalize on partnership opportunities with NATO entities, COEs in our COI, Industries, and Academics, but as well seek foster new mutually supportive and habitual relationships with the Operational and Training Community, locally here in Souda Bay (e.g NAMFI, NMIOTC, 115 CW) and remotely through exploitation of the Synthetic Environment (e.g ABTC/HATC/UAWC). Critical in all our pillars of work to boost envisaged transformation of IAMD effects is our developing M&S laboratory which will be further digitally evolved in our new building, scheduled to be delivered by the first semester of 2026.
