The 20th Technology for Information, Decision and Execution Superiority (TIDE) Sprint was held at the Virginia Beach Resort Hotel, Virginia Beach, Virginia USA on 22-26 October 2012.

The event was hosted by Allied Command's Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) and NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC) Division.

TIDE Sprints are "sandbox" events that bring together the TIDE Community to discuss and rapidly solve C4ISR issues through a set of collaborative and educational think-tank sessions. TIDE Sprints use a combination of brainstorming, collaboration, education, demonstration, coding and testing to identify and address issues otherwise known as "tracks".

Attendees from nine NATO commands/agencies as well as from Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and representatives from academia and industry attended the event.

"Track discussions were the core of the event," said CAPT (N) Howard Wanamaker. "There was a dynamic exchange and collaboration of ideas on several relevant track issues to include Cyber Defence, NATO Future Mission Network (FMN), Cloud and Mobile computing, and Joint Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (JISR)."

This year's Afghanistan Mission Network (AMN) Architecture Working Group (AWG) was composed of the national lead architects for the AMN. The group meets four times a year to plan and coordinate their work; this was the first AWG meeting held in conjunction with a TIDE Sprint.

The Command and Control (C2) track focused on AMN status, NATO Future Mission Network (FMN) Concept development, and Coalition Mission Thread (CMT) processes and reviews to guide development of a common set of operational requirements.

The Cyber Defence track discussions were triggered from analysing the US Department of Energy Cyber Defence capability implementation, released to the public in May 2012 as well as the technical report of the Cyber Defence scenarios used during CWIX 2012.

"The Cyber Defence track was especially important as the outcome of these discussions will be used to orient ACT's Cyber Defence program of work in the next year, and will provide suggestions for CWIX 2013 edition's Cyber Defence focus area," said Mr Mario Beccia.

Cloud and Mobile Computing was yet another popular track topic. This year marked the first time that Cloud and Mobile computing was combined in order to synchronize the efforts and share ideas among their combined group of NATO, national, industry and academia participants

"We are excited with the outcome of the track discussions," said LTC Alexander Schulz. "Our next step is to consolidate the draft paper on Mobile Computing to include recommendations for NATO, but also to define the NATO priorities in this broad area which could fall into mobile computing interoperability such as a NATO App Store or better use of mobile computing within NATO through mobility implementation."

Other track groups focused on Enterprise Architecture, Innovative Use of Commercial Technologies, and the NATO Communications & Information Agency (NCIA)'s Programme Management Integration Capability (PMIC).

The JISR track however was most appreciated. "The inclusion of the JISR within the TIDE Sprint sandbox was long overdue," said Mr John Neumayer. "Future engagement is most welcome and should expand the level of participation, address common objectives and coherent solutions."

The next Tide Sprint will be held in the Joint Warfare Centre (JWC), Stavanger, Norway, 15-19 April 2013. The Spring 2013 event will incorporate JWC exercise and Computer Assisted eXercises (CAX) trainers with an objective to discuss exercise support and Immersive Training Environments in line with the Connected Forces Initiative (CFI) objectives.

Additional information can be found on tide.act.nato.int (username and password required) or by contacting Mr Kell Hvolbol, +1 757 747 3652 or kell.hvolbol@act.nato.int.