A NATO system to distribute, store, archive and retrieve full-motion video to coalition units is in place in parts of Afghanistan. The capability for coalition forces everywhere in the country is scheduled for summer’s end.

The Integrated Command Control Software for Air Operations (ICC) is ready. So is much of the NATO intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance “toolbox,” software that automates information sharing among the secret networks of the allies.

A tool to manage information collection is in the works and will be available by the end of the year.

The Afghan Mission Network, the Internet-service-like thread that holds all of the ISR and enhanced communications together, is scheduled to be in wide use by troops and analysts before the end of July.

The complete NATO ISR pipeline is nearly ready, with all of the tools and bandwidth to use it.

The technical progress has raised questions that advocates of information sharing have long wanted to see addressed. With so many capabilities in place, will nations, including the U.S., be willing to share more of their sensitive intelligence?

Technical shortcomings are fast disappearing as a reason not to share information. “If there is no capability [to receive ISR], there’s no need to do it, no pressure to do it. Now there is pressure to do it because the technical and operational capabilities are there,” said Michal Olejarnik, a spokesman for NATO’s information technology arm, the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A).

So far, at least in words, officials are reacting to the pressure. Almost mantralike, general officers at the Joint Warfighters Conference in Virginia Beach, Va., in May pushed for a freer flow of intelligence among the U.S. and NATO and coalition forces through the new technology.

“The question should not be need to know, it should be need to share,” said Army Gen. David Petreaus, head of U.S. Central Command.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, who directs the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Organization, was blunt.

“We have got to knock down the barriers that deny the free flow of technology and information with our coalition partners,” he said. “We disable ourselves by an inability to share information. At the tactical level, it is absolutely essential.”

NATO officers also voiced their opinions.

“We need to have a paradigm shift from need-to-know to need-to-share intelligence,” said Jaap Willemse, a major general in the Royal Netherlands Air Force and the assistant chief of staff for C4I with NATO.

“We need to get away from stovepipes. I’m talking about services and nations and [nongovernmental organizations]. It means you need to work at the lowest level that you can. You run a risk, but you have to accept that risk.”

At risk isn’t just the information itself.

“From a national perspective, it’s not a question of sharing the source,” said Italian Army Maj. Dino Mora, who spent time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He now works for NATO’s Allied Transformation Command (ATC) in Norfolk, Va.

Endangering the source is “something we don’t want to do,” Mora said. “It’s a question of what comes from the source. It’s the information.”

After almost nine years of fighting as allies in Afghanistan, skepticism remains. So does the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET), which is where the U.S. conducts most of its ISR business, and which is governed by laws forbidding disseminating its products to non-U.S. personnel.

The “sneaker net” is a somewhat clumsy method of circumventing some of the SIPRNET’s limitations in sharing. In it, information is downloaded on a disk or drive and moved from one system to another manually, “which is not secure, is very labor intensive and ensures that the information is never fresh,” said French Air Force Gen. Stéphane Abrial, who heads ATC.

“Trust is a two-way street. If an ally can trust a coalition member in command of his troops to conduct, for example, kinetic targeting, that ally cannot be kept from relevant intelligence by anomalies such as ‘for eyes only’ rules that create duplication and frustration,” he said.

NC3A officials say the issue is coming to a head because NATO is ready to accept sharing of information. Those capabilities are still spoken of in terms of potential by Sean Midwood, program manager for the alliance’s effort to improve the flow of intelligence among allied forces in Afghanistan. He is the moving force behind the full-motion video distribution system.

“There’s a training issue, a learning issue, people getting used to the fact that the capability is there,” he said. “Now [ISR operators in] the theater are crawling with the capability, as they learn to walk before they start to run.”

That goes well beyond ISR analysts and operators. Some of their work is actually being simplified, because dealing with full-motion video is being done as an application on a computer system, rather than adding another screen to an already crowded desk. But with more products to analyze, “if we’re not careful, we’ll be drowned by information, and that’s just as bad as not having access to the information,” Willemse said. “So information management is very important.”

So, too, is getting the word to the field that there are products available to solve problems, as is teaching which ISR capability is best to address which operational issue.

“How do I get the right information at the right time to the right person in the right format?” asked Willemse, in effect summing up the ISR issue for both U.S. and coalition troops.

Franco Fiore, principal scientist and head of NC3A’s Counter Improvised Explosive Device effort, offers an example in his area. IEDs are responsible for more than half of coalition casualties. Full-motion video is a prime tool in counter-IED operations.

“If you have footage of a vehicle approaching an area, stopping for 20 minutes, then leaving the area, you can easily guess what may be happening,” Fiore said.

That’s easy enough in the “one-use” system that NATO has been saddled with for much of the Afghanistan war.

But now that archived video can be retrieved through a metadata system that stores video by the date, time and specifics of its content, it can be used in a different way.

“You can look at different video three or four days apart and compare them to find out if, in a certain area, there has been a change in terrain,” Fiore said.

NATO has incorporated this lesson and others involving training, use of jammers to negate remote-controlled IEDs and suicide bombers, and timelines for other resources in a Counter IED Action Plan that was approved by the military committee in May, and which is the result of a hurry-up effort that began in December.

Some of those resources would flow through the Afghanistan ISR pipeline, and the education in using them will continue through the end of the year and beyond.

One challenge is that the NATO technological rollout is being accomplished in some of the worst economic times members have seen in decades. The NC3A is marketing itself to the members as a way to stretch the defense euro.

“We’re seeing a greater interest in nations saying, ‘Let’s look at the best use of these very expensive capabilities,’” Olejarnik said. “For example, your French commander knows that there are U.S. assets in an area, and that if he can access, store and retrieve certain [unmanned aerial vehicle] ISR information, then he might not have to deploy his own assets.

“And, secondly, we’ve seen a far greater interest in interoperability. Previously, we had nations developing capabilities nationally, then coming together at the coalition level to see how they could make things work. Usually that involves more spending.”

Now interoperability is stressed in the development phase of technology, saving money downstream.

Midwood added that once all of the new NATO ISR capabilities are up and running, more efficiency will result.

“Once we have an intervening solution in theater, I think you’re going to find that we have redundant assets in some areas,” he said. “Then we’re going to be able to reallocate the assets in a more logical and efficient way.” To some extent, U.S. ISR is already being shared in the field, at least informally.

“The further from the battlefield we get, the more we become risk-averse about sharing info,” Oates said.

Mora offered an example of an Italian Special Forces unit that managed to avoid a Taliban checkpoint after running across an American unit and exchanging information while on patrol in Afghanistan.

“Obviously, all information is not shared, but a great deal is starting to be shared,” Midwood said. “People are starting to see that the more information is shared, the better the war effort is, especially from an ISR perspective.”

The Afghan Mission Network is a linchpin in efforts to open American ISR products to coalition partners. There is a sense that part of the Afghanistan war legacy is being written before the conflict comes to an end.

“We used to have barbed wire around intelligence operations,” said Air Force Col. Jacqueline Walsh, commander of Joint Forces Command’s Joint Intelligence Operations Center. “We wouldn’t share. But we have to kick down the walls.

“We’re hoping that the [Afghan Mission Network] will go beyond Afghanistan. That it will be the standard operating procedure from now on. Afghanistan is a real turning point for us out there.”

That remains to be seen, with the operation of a new ISR pipeline and general officers feeling the need to prime the pump to get information flowing.

“If we want to go to a single ISR environment,” Willemse said, “we need to take care of sharing information right now.”