CWIX: an ongoing success story for digital interoperability

A strategic catalyst

CWIX is NATO’s flagship exercise for validating digital interoperability. Far from being a purely technical event, it serves as a strategic catalyst, enabling NATO to simultaneously strengthen its interoperability, operational effectiveness, readiness for Multi-Domain Operations, and digital transformation.

DCS at the heart of the Alliance’s interoperability requirements

At the heart of the Alliance’s interoperability requirements lies the concept of Data Centricity and Data-Centric Security (DCS). At the CWIX 2026 exercise held in June in Bydgoszcz, Poland, Thales implemented a solution ensuring advanced compliance with STANAG 4774 and 4778 Ed. 2, enabling the insertion of security metadata into data and its signing in accordance with Cryptographic Binding Profiles.

Thales' in-depth knowledge and expertise in these standards enabled our teams to validate the implementations and identify remaining ambiguities in the standards that could prevent full interoperability between two solutions implementing them.

As a result, Thales will support NATO's standardisation authorities in discussing and validating the updates that may be required. Beyond the immediate benefits for NATO, this expertise also helps France’s Allies to accelerate their DCS maturity.

Objectives for CWIX 27

The first objective for CWIX 2027 will be to conduct more complex tests in the DCS compliance area. These will include validating the more granular application of metadata through data object transformations and assessing their impact on Cryptographic Binding, policy equivalencies and the management of alternative labels, as well as Succession Handling.

The second objective will be to integrate DCS directly into the implementation of operational systems, in order to maximise compliance with STANAGs and, consequently, the level of interoperability. ARCADIA is a representative example of such a system.