NATO’s ability to gather information and fuse intelligence from multiple sources over space, air, sea and land has just reached an important milestone. On Wednesday (10 February 2016), the NATO Secretary General welcomed the statement by Defense Ministers on the Initial Operating Capability for Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.

“We, the Allied Defense Ministers, have today declared the initial operational capability for NATO's Joint, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance initiative. This achievement follows up to the commitments that our nations made at the Chicago Summit and subsequently reaffirmed at the Wales Summit.” the Ministers declared, stressing that “JISR will maximize the resources we have at hand already, both in NATO and in individual Allies: enhanced inter-connectivity across our system, more training and expertise among our personnel, and lead to better procedures for information handling and sharing. All these improvements will ultimately contribute to a better informed and more watchful Alliance. JISR stands ready to support rapid decision making across several major lines of effort, including the Readiness Action Plan, our strategy on hybrid warfare, and our overall deterrence posture.”

Providing the right information to decision-makers and action-takers is vital for all military operations. While surveillance and reconnaissance can answer the questions “what,” “when” and “where”, the combined information from various intelligence sources and disciplines provide the answers to “how” and “why.” When all of this is combined, you create Joint ISR. NATO JISR has just reached the Initial Operational Capability (IOC) that means promoting and enabling data sharing within the NATO Response force.