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 an essential, continuous mission in peacetime, crisis and conflict, safeguarding and protecting Alliance territory, populations and forces against air and missile threat and attack. It contributes to deterrence and to indivisible security and freedom of action of the Alliance.
NATO IAMD is the defensive part of the Alliance’s Joint Air Power, which aims to ensure the stability and security of NATO airspace by coordinating, controlling and exploiting the air domain.
It incorporates all measures to deter and defend against any air and missile threat or to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action.
NATO IAMD can address threats from the air, on land or at sea, which may include chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear, as well as electromagnetic and cyber threats.
NATO IAMD provides a highly responsive, robust, time-critical and persistent capability in order to achieve a desired level of control of the air, wherein the Alliance is able 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 comprised of sensors, command and control facilities and weapons systems.
NATINAMDS comes under the authority of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
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 end of 2024.
