STM Advances NATO’s Command and Control Capabilities

STM, a leading developer of advanced technologies in the Turkish defence sector, continues to contribute to the NATO Integration Core (INT-CORE) Project, which supports situational awareness across the battlefield. Through ongoing enhancements, STM is strengthening interoperability among NATO’s information systems and improving information flow.

STM Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret A.Ş., which develops innovative systems in the Turkish defence sector and advanced technologies at home and abroad, continues to expand its role in NATO with its engineering competencies.

STM continues to build on its extensive portfolio of projects developed for NATO, contributing to the advancement of command and control capabilities. In 2024, STM signed a contract with the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) and is carrying out the modernisation of the NATO Integration Core (INT-CORE) system. These ongoing efforts also include the delivery of new technological infrastructures to support NATO’s communication and information systems.

NATO INT-CORE to Gain New Capabilities

The INT-CORE system developed by NATO to support the efficient operation of information systems and to accelerate decision-making processes standardises the information fed from different systems, contributing to increased situational awareness in the field. The main upgrade to the NATO INT-CORE system being provided by STM is the “Lake Diver” component. Lake Diver establishes meaningful links between the large volumes of information from different systems on the battlefield held in the so-called “data lake” of the INT-CORE system. Lake Diver then searches, filters and models large data pools and presents critical information to military decision-makers with maps.

Güleryüz: Developing Advanced Technologies for NATO

Commenting on STM’s relationship with NATO, Özgür Güleryüz, General Manager of STM, said that STM had applied its advanced engineering capabilities to the development of many projects for NATO to date. Addressing the subject of the recent signing of the intelligence sub-software project, he said:

"We are proud to add another project to the list of our international achievements in the field of security and defence. NATO is the world's largest military alliance, with 32 different countries that operate many different information systems. INT-CORE is the technological infrastructure that facilitates the interoperability of these different systems. The system standardises the data fed from different systems, ensuring that whatever information is needed on the battlefield can be transmitted to the right people at the right time.

We previously provided engineering services for the development, maintenance and support of the INT-CORE project for 5 years, and we are now able to draw from the experience we gained at that time to both modernise and add new competencies to the INT-CORE system. Among the new features we will introduce is the "Lake diver". Lake diver will effectively analyse the voluminous information held in the INT-CORE, database, and will aid decision-makers in making sense of the data on maps. We will complete the acceptance of the project’s seventh package in February. INT-CORE’s capabilities are being actively used during CWIX, NATO’s largest digital exercise, and the new version will also be deployed in this year’s exercise.”

Strengthening NATO's Command and Control Processes

NATO INT-CORE provides situational awareness across the entire battlefield, and ensures that decision-makers are provided with the right information at the right time. INT-CORE’s command and control processes support the dissemination of command and control, joint picture, battlefield, mission, etc. information. The NATO Integration Core (INT-CORE) is in active use for information integration and data lake creation, and was most recently demonstrated during the CWIX 2024 exercise. STM provided update and maintenance services for the INT-CORE project between 2017 and 2022. Within the scope of the NATO INT-CORE Project, NATO provided 5-year maintenance and technical support services for the INT-CORE software, which is in operational use by the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) based in NATO’s Afghan Mission Network Operations Centre (AMNOC).