The SAPEM intelligence management system, entirely developed by GMV, will be put through its paces in NATO’s interoperability exercise C2ISR Unified Vision 2014 (UV14), to be held in the second fortnight of May.

The objective of UV14, involving fifteen NATO countries, is to gauge the interoperability of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data provided by different countries and agencies..

Spain will take part in UV14 with a seventy-strong delegate from the airforce, army, navy and chiefs of staff, deploying an electronic warfare Boeing 707 as the data gathering platform plus the SAPEM intelligence management system, entirely developed by GMV for the Directorate General of Armaments and Material (Dirección General de Armamento y Material: DGAM).

The SAPEM system is an R&D project carried out by GMV for the Directorate General of Armaments and Material (Dirección General de Armamento y Material: DGAM), comprising ATENEA stations (product management), SEISMO stations (operation) and the database (CSD) for interchanging intelligence products and data-exchange workflows. This system facilitates deployment of interoperable ISR capabilities (on the basis of concepts defined in the multinational cooperation program MAJIIC), enabling the Spanish armed forces’ available ISR resources to be brought into line with the allied JISR initiative.

The concurrence on the same spot of multinational air, naval and land resources will enable an assessment to be made, among other things, of their ability to detect camouflaged objects on the ground and distinguish between real targets and decoys. An assessment will also be made of the systems’ ability to deal with jamming.

 

The UV14 exercise will also simulate a cyber-attack in which some network nodes will act as support while others will be knocked out without prior warning. The objective is to find out how to reset a network of this type and how to maintain the mission profile.

The systems that will take part in the exercises have already been tried out independently or jointly in simulated environments. Now they will be put through their paces jointly in a real environment using the different resources of the participating armies.

The results and lessons learnt in this exercise will have a very big influence on the development and application of the JISR (Joint Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capability both of the alliance and Spain. Spain will be evaluated for deploying this capability in the Land Component Command when Initial Operational Capability (IOC) has been declared.