NIMBLE TITAN Strengthens Multinational Missile Defense Cooperation

Published April 5, 2017
By JFCC IMD Press Release
Joint Functional Component Command

AMERSFOORT, The Netherlands -- Twenty-six participant nations and international organizations came together March 13-17 for the first major event of the two-year NIMBLE TITAN 18 missile defense experimentation campaign.

NIMBLE TITAN is an unclassified, multinational, missile defense series of experiments executed within an integrated air and missile defense context. The campaign focuses on regional and global challenges through cooperatively developed concepts, objectives, and analysis.

The campaign is sponsored by U.S. Strategic Command and led by the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense.

Through NIMBLE TITAN nations explore potential policies and operational constructs that will need to be in place in the future to facilitate cooperative missile defense. It serves as a forum for multinational collaboration that facilitates the exchange of views and experimentation to expand international relationships and enhances regional missile defense, and strengthens deterrence.

Multinational participants from Ministries of Defense and foreign affairs jointly shape objectives, concept design, data collection and analysis.The experiment involves mock air and missile threats from fictitious countries in a scenario based 10 years in the future.

As the most recent NIMBLE TITAN event began, the director of Plans, Policy, and Allied Integration of JFCC IMD, Col. Tom Hancock, emphasized the importance of the nations and organizations coming together in cooperation.

“The ability to examine issues related to policies, integration of plans, and future technical interoperability is critical to making progress in collective missile defense,” Hancock said. “As adversaries continue to mature their ballistic missile threats, as well as their air breathing threats such as cruise missiles, unmanned aerial systems, and hypersonic glide vehicles, our ability to protect our homelands, coalitions and partners becomes increasingly more challenging.”

Hancock went on to say "the true value of NIMBLE TITAN is your participation and engagement with each other and the relationships you will develop this week. Ultimately, the outcomes of this event will inform and influence your national policies and procedures, but it is the relationships with each other that will be most important in times of collective crisis."

The NIMBLE TITAN event was also opened by Brig. Gen. R.J. Jeulink, deputy director of Plans – Defense Staff, Ministry of Defense, Netherlands. In his speech, Jeulink highlighted the rapidly changing security environment worldwide and how events like NIMBLE TITAN are important to the future of integrated air and missile defense coalitions and investigating its complex challenges.

“It provides a venue to explore concepts, try new methods of planning and assignment, identify legal issues and define means to overcome those,” Jeulink said. “I am a great supporter and believer of experimental settings like this, where our thought processes and procedures are challenged.”

In addition to being the first execution event in the two-year NIMBLE TITAN 18 campaign, this event was unique as it focused on the pre-conflict time frame and dealt mainly with the challenges and potential solutions that occur prior to hostilities.

Examples of topics included deterrence and dissuasion of state and non-state actors as well as the political and military actions that could be used to de-escalate tensions. NIMBLE TITAN also experiments with missile defense system interoperability and integration and explores integrated air and missile defense opportunities that support multinational planning and execution.

As part of the series, event host nations are offered the opportunity to share information on their national capabilities. At this event the Netherlands Ministry of Defense provided a briefing and an operational demonstration of the SMART-L radar system.

Observations, recommendations, and products from the event were captured to inform potential future military or national policy actions. Planning has already begun for the next NIMBLE TITAN event, which will continue to expand on the work accomplished this week and through previous years' events. This provides a continuing forum to examine policy and military solutions for all participating nations.

Nimble Titan strengthens multinational missile defense cooperation