Civil Military co-operation center of excellence

The Concepts, Interoperability and Capabilities Branch (CIC) of the CCOE is to provide Subject matter expertise in the field of NATO Civil-Military Co-operation (CIMIC) in order to support the transformational and operational requests of the Strategic Commands, the Sponsoring Nations and other Customers. This includes the contribution to the development of CIMIC-policy, -doctrine and -standards.
In order to fulfil this mission CIC considers the activities of NATO, crucial non-NATO actors like UN, EU, non- NATO Nations and essential GOs and NGOs as well as develops the interfaces and relationships to other adjacent military functions.

Against this background CIC collects knowledge and experience by conducting and attending relevant seminars, workshops and conferences, by contributing to and participating in concept development and experimentation, exercises and studies. This knowledge and experience is reflected and analyzed within the branch. The result will be incorporated in the development of CIMIC policy, doctrine and standards, and influence the future NATO CIMIC education and all kinds of CIMIC trainings including experiments and operations between the military and civil institutions in any crisis management.

Being a part of the international network consisting of experts from GOs, IOs, NGOs, civilian universities, research institutes, military academies and other relevant actors is crucial for providing the state of the art knowledge on any CIMIC related subjects.

Objective CIC Branch

The CIC Branch is to generate CIMIC related expert knowledge, to contribute to the development of existing and new concepts, policies and doctrines; to validate those new concepts in exercises, experiments and real missions, in order to provide this expertise to NATO, Sponsoring Nations and other military and civil institutions/organizations, while simultaneously contributing to the lessons learned process.

Seminars, Research and Development

The CCOE facilitates a serie of seminars to combine expertise for the development of new concepts and doctrines. Therefore it enjoys academic freedom in determining the subjects of its seminars and in choosing speakers and participants.

The purpose of Seminars is to present contemporary information on a specifically defined subject in the field of international civil-military co-operation and relations. The mix of participants is designed to start the discussion on specific subjects like Counter- Terrorism, NATO Provincial Reconstruction Teams or Gender issues, to add approaches of new perspectives and to extend the network of the CIMIC- concerned audience. Subsequently produced articles on each issue are designed continue the discussion once started and provide information of immediate operational relevance with appropriate basic science background.

Additionally CCOE contributes its expertise to external seminars by sending dedicated CIMIC experts. They are sharing their expertise and their experience in all CIMIC related subjects.

For the future, the CCOE will continue to promote the ideas and findings of the seminars among relevant institutions and individuals, and to emphasise the value of mutual understanding through a continued debate.

For further details like participation in coming seminars or results of finished ones as well as contribution to external seminars, please move on to the referring subsite.