On 25 March three leaders from the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) spoke at the NATO Defence College’s “Innovation Week” course. The course aimed to expand awareness of innovation with a focus on NATO, EU, as well as on specialized organizations working in a national and supra-national context and to deepen knowledge of innovation in specific areas.
NATO Chief Scientist and Science and Technology Board Chairman, Dr Bryan Wells, introduced the session.
Dr Wells illustrated the crucial role played in innovation by the STO and its network of over 6,000 scientists, engineers and analysts. STO sustains NATO technological advantage by generating, sharing and utilizing advanced scientific knowledge, technological developments, innovation and providing scientific advice to NATO leadership based on S&T Programme of Work.
Dr Wells also provided an overview on how STO brings together Defence S&T leadership from Nations.
The Chief Scientist highlighted that despite the pandemic, STO’s commitment has further intensified with over 340 activities currently underway. Moreover the network of scientists, engineers and analysts responded with speed and imagination to the new challenge posed by Covid-19.
STO is also involving young scientist to nurture the next generation of scientific leaders.
The Innovation Week also saw the participation of the STO Collaboration Support Office (CSO) Deputy Director Major General (retired) Philippe Montocchio, and STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) Deputy Director Dr. Giovanni Sembenini, who deepened specific technologies from two S&T domains the maritime and the land one.
Dr Sembenini, presented on the CMRE programme of work, capabilities and scientific contributions to the Alliance. With over 60 years of knowledge and experience in undersea research, CMRE is a recognized centre of world-class expertise in the maritime domain. The Centre is a collaboration hub for scientists from all NATO Nations to work together to maintain NATO’s maritime technological edge.
CMRE’s research programme closely aligns with the themes identified by NATO as Emerging Disruptive Technologies (EDTs), which will play an increasing role in defence science and technology over the next two decades. The ultimate goal of EDT research is to integrate future military capabilities in the human, physical and data domains through a decentralized and ubiquitous large-scale network of artificial intelligence enabled assets.
Major General (rtd) Philippe Montocchio, After briefly describing how likely the operational environment will evolve in the future, he focused on a group of key military functions (Consult, Command & Control (C3), Communicate & Inform, Engage & Protect, and Educate & Train) to explain how the Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) would affect them and the way future decision-makers would have to adapt to new capabilities. For each group of key military functions and associated EDTs, he discussed some S&T activities that the STO community currently conducts to answer the challenges that warfighters meet in operations, and to close the technological gap between current capabilities and tomorrow’s weapons and systems. He concluded his presentation with a description of the NATO S&T Collaborative Business Model.
Published by STO | 
