Modern warfare environments are faster, more complex and more contested than ever. Technological innovations that have significantly expanded military capability in recent years have created complex, shifting multi-domain frontiers, where making the right decision based on the right information as quickly as possible is key to success.

The multi-domain battlefield

It is a characteristic of modern crises to unfold across several domains at once, often predicated by sub-threshold activity in the cyber domain. This can take many forms, from overt disruption of chosen sectors or organisations to more subtle forms of information operations aimed at influencing a wider population or destabilising the established order. Given the cyber domain’s proliferation and integration into aspects of all other defence operating domains, it is both an effector and an enabler to multi-domain integration and interoperability at scale. It is only through integration and interoperation that trusted information can be disseminated at speed, enabling tactical superiority through information advantage. Unfortunately, a principle of need-to-know rather than trust-but-verify continues to prevail, meaning that information is often siloed beyond its usefulness rather than being shared securely in a timely manner.

Multi-domain activity is the prevailing mode of current defence operations regardless of whether those activities are seamlessly integrated or not. The increasing level of interaction and inter-dependency between operating domains is a call to action. To ensure operational effectiveness, trusted data needs to flow between these domains securely, with agility, and with high assurance to guarantee the data’s confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Trust and speed are both vital, neither can be sidelined

Volume does not equate to value. More data does not guarantee better decisions; indeed, too much data can be counterproductive, hindering rather than aiding the decision cycle – volume and velocity are difficult to achieve when the means of communication is constrained. Ensuring the timeliness, quality and assurance of data are more important to enabling decision superiority. Decision makers need information they can understand, verify and act on quickly, which is why integrating the means for secure information exchange seamlessly within allied defence communication architecture is crucial. Tailoring secure information exchange solutions to specific operational needs enables data to flow more freely to where it is of most value with minimum delay, aiding the decision cycle. It also provides continued assurance of information confidentiality and integrity, allowing control over the amount and types of data being shared, ultimately assisting in getting the right data to the right place at the right time.

Data velocity is also vital to survival and mission effectiveness in increasingly interconnected and automated battlespaces where poor information flow can slow response times, reduce confidence and create operational risk. Accurate and timely information is essential to every defence outcome as, without access to trusted data at the speed of relevance, it is impossible to conduct Integrated Warfare in a meaningful way or to sustain it at an appropriate scale. Initiatives across MOD and NATO are moving to address these issues, pursuing interoperation of military capability across domains to significantly increase the speed at which trusted information travels.

Information advantage means everything

Nexor is engaged in several aspects of Integrated Warfare development, assisting with research, development, integration, testing and trialling of all-new interoperable capabilities for MOD, such as the All-Domain Data Interoperability (ADDI) programme. The MOD-owned capability enables friction-free access to data, connecting sensors, systems and platforms within and between domains via decision makers at the relevant levels of command in real-time. This enables decisions to be made rapidly from data gathered across the defence landscape. Nexor’s close involvement with the development of data interoperability for MOD over the last several years enables us to leverage our expertise and knowledge to other allied defence clients in need of a multi-domain secure information exchange solution.

In the foreword of the Royal Air Force Air & Space Digital Plan 2026, Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth, KCB, OBE, DFC, ADC states: “Whether supporting precision strikes, enabling resilient communications, or defending critical assets in orbit, digital capability is central to our mission effectiveness”. As rapid access to trusted information is more critical than ever to the effectiveness of defence operations and decision making, it is essential for defence to adapt, fund and develop cutting-edge information exchange and interoperability solutions if they have any hope of gaining and maintaining information advantage over adversaries in an age of rapidly increasing technological innovation with equal potential for good or ill.