CRR 16 Kick Off Workshop

The Capability Requirement Review 16 (CRR-16) cycle of the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP) started with a kick-off workshop hosted at the Joint CBRN Defence Centre of Excellence in Vyskov, from 21 to 23 May 2013. The workshop was organized by the Allied Command Transformation Staff Element Europe (ACT SEE) and was attended by representatives from NATO’s International Military Staff (IMS), Allied Command Operations (ACO) Allied Command Transformation (ACT), The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA), Joint Force Command (JFC) Naples, Joint CBRN Defence Capability Development Group (JCBRN-CDG), French Joint Staff and the JCBRN Defence COE.

ACT SEE has the Bi-Strategic Command lead for the Defence Planning Staff Team (DPST) created to deliver the Capability Requirements within the NDPP. For CBRN related issues there has always been a very productive level of cooperation between the Mid-term Requirements Branch of ACT SEE and JCBRN Defence COE.

In order to start the new cycle in the most efficient way, all responsible bodies decided to review and, where appropriate, to enhance the way CBRN requirements were derived in the previous cycle (CRR-12).

During the workshops the following aspects were examined in the light of recent changes in CBRN concepts, doctrines and CBRN

Lesson Identified/Learned during recent operations and exercises:

• CBRN tasks within the current Mission to Task Decomposition (MTD);

• CBRN assumptions used with Case Studies (CS) such as threat assessment;

• Capability Codes and Capability Statements;

• The land use assumptions method used for determining CBRN requirements,

including the Capability Assignment Logic (CALs).

The output of the workshop consists of recommendations and SMEs advice on how best to derive CBRN requirements in CRR-16 cycle. These will be the final products of the CBRN Targets in terms of capabilities. The work will also be coordinated with the work of the CBRN 2020 Team of Experts established by the Joint CBRN Defence Capability Development Group.

The COE’s group of SMEs led by COS, Colonel Smith, has contributed substantially to the success of this workshop with valuable, practical and well-founded ideas, arguments and proposals, showing that the choice of organizing such an event at the COE, the largest pool of CBRN expertise within NATO, was more than inspired and should be kept as a best practice for future similar events.