NATO C3 Agency Joins OMG; Will Align Goals With Crisis Management and C4I Task Forces

NEEDHAM, Mass., Dec. 13, 2002 -- The Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)) announces that the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) has joined the organization as a Government level member. In its role at the Government level of membership, the NATO C3 Agency will work on standards in the Crisis Management arena as well as participate on the Consultation, Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence Task Force (C4I).

"OMG is delighted to welcome NATO to OMG membership. As we move forward on international standards for crisis management & intervention, as well as mapping and other geodata and C4I standards, their participation will be key to ensuring standards quality. As acknowledged leaders in coalition military operations in both peacekeeping and crisis management roles, NATO brings quite a lot to the table," said Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO, OMG.

The NC3A exists to provide unbiased scientific advice and assistance to NATO military and political authorities. Additionally, the Agency plays a major role in developing, procuring and implementing cost-effective system capabilities to support the political consultation and military command and control functions of NATO. The NC3A falls under the direction of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Organization (NC30).

"As NATO relies more and more on Commercial-off-the-shelf software products, it is of key importance to us, to influence as much as possible the initial specifications and standards that these products are based on. In addition we would like to take advantage of those OMG standards and specifications that would be of special interest and applicability to future C4ISR systems as well to information sharing in coalition and crisis response operations", said Dr. Gert Retzer, Director of Command and Control Systems, NC3A.

About The NATO C3 Agency.

The NATO C3 Agency (NC3A) is a customer funded, non-profit agency, located in Brussels, Belgium, and The Hague, Netherlands. NC3A is developing, procuring and implementing state of the art C3 capabilities for NATO and it is providing unbiased scientific advice and support to NATO authorities, nations, and other customers. The Agency has more than 500 professionals, civilian and military, from NATO member nations dedicated to provide to NATO high quality of deliverables and service. Effective exploitation of technology is a critical success factor for the Agency's mission which is based on three principles:

-- The recruitment of highly qualified engineering and scientific staff to work in an environment that allows them the opportunity to use and exploit current technology. Such staff, together with experienced military officers, provide the scientific and technical interface necessary to deliver quality C3 capabilities to our customer.

-- The pursuit of user-oriented laboratory testbedding and field prototyping to provide a means to involve operational users in a process of applying technology to improve the operational capabilities of NATO.

-- The use of evolutionary acquisition to quickly field new systems and equipment that can be clearly specified, competitively procured and implemented with little risk.

The NATO C3 Agency has a wealth of continually evolving operational, technical and scientific knowledge from involvement with critical C3 issues with NATO for 50 years. The Agency's expertise, or core competencies, are organized into functional areas and co-ordinated by integrated programme teams. Those functional areas are:

-- C3 Policy Concept & Architecture The Agency provides C3 Services to NATO Headquarters in the domain of Communication Information System (CIS) design and standards; CIS interoperability; databases support, frequency management. Interoperability framework and integration plan.

-- Operations Research and Functional Services Scientific advice and analytical support for defence planning, operational analysis of ongoing operations, simulation and modelling as well as for training and exercises.

-- Communication and Information Systems Scientific and technical support in the areas of fixed and mobile communication and transmission systems, information security, electronic warfare and information processing.

-- Command and Control Systems Scientific and technical support to military commands with emphasis on C2 system design, C2 technology; sensors; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); and theatre-missile defence (TMD), and C2 system interoperability.

-- Acquisition Project management, cost analysis and estimates, competitive bidding and contracting for Nato Security Investment Programme, for nations and in support of ongoing operations.

More information about NC3A can be found on the World Wide Web under www.nc3a.nato.int

About The OMG

With well-established standards covering software from design and development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the key to successful IT. Based on the Model Driven Architecture (MDA), OMG's standards cover multiple operating systems, programming languages, middleware and networking infrastructures, and software development environments. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for the MDA, include the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments running today. OMG's well-established CORBA services and industry-specific standards are being re-issued under the MDA in many popular middleware environments. OMG domain (industry-specific) standards cover vertical markets including healthcare, telecommunications, biotechnology, transportation and a dozen other areas. The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC, and international marketing offices in Japan, the UK, and Germany.

The Object Management Group is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. OMG member companies write, adopt, and maintain the organization's standards following a mature, open process. All current OMG specifications may be downloaded without charge from the organization's website, www.omg.org; the site also provides additional information about OMG and its activities. For information on joining the OMG, or questions not addressed on the website, please contact OMG headquarters by email at info@omg.org, by phone at +1-781-444 0404, or by fax at +1-781-444 0320. The OMG provides current information and services for distributed enterprise computing through The Information Brokerage(R) service on the World Wide Web at www.omg.org and www.corba.org.

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