Civil Military Co-operation Centre of Excellence

From 16 to 18 February 2010 the CCOE hosted the second working group conference regarding CIMIC in a Maritime Environment. The maritime experts gathered first in Naples, Italy, in early December 2009 with the purpose to support the CIMIC experiments to be conducted by the Allied Command for Transformation (ACT). This working group, consisting of 29 members from Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain, The Netherlands and the United States of America represented a vast variety of entities of the Alliance. The group is focussed on developing a doctrinal document to support naval commanders in their operational efforts according CIMIC in their especially challenging environment. The chairman of the working group, Navy Captain Gorniak (POL), representing Strike Force NATO, expressed his appreciation for the Nations efforts to support this important task. The special nature of the maritime environment – and all its influences on the conduct of operations – asks for a different kind of guidance to be granted to Naval Commanders from the doctrinal level.

As the CCOE already successfully iterated the AJP9, it was a logical deduction to get the CCOE into this naval environment, providing best advice in the area of civil-military cooperation. On completion of a plenary session at the first day the working group divided into two subgroups, focussed on steering requirements for the future work and the production of the doctrinal document itself. The outcome of those working groups was particularly valuable for the short and mid term perspective of the objectives being striven for. The next meeting of the working group will take place in Norfolk, USA, end of March this year. The main areas of work will consist of the production of a draft version of the doctrinal document, which will be sent out to the Alliance for comments later this year as well as the support of an experimental design process for the experiments of the Allied Command for Transformation. Those experiments will either validate the statements of the doctrine at a later stage or prove false. This comprehensive action in creating a doctrine and supporting and conducting an experiment in order to verify if the doctrine is adding value or not, spread over the shoulders of eleven different entities of the Alliance, is a symbol for the new operational background of NATO. This is a good example for the spirit of the CCOE as well: in chorus we will achieve more than individually. The CCOE will keep on reporting about the milestones produced in this project.