MONS, Belgium - Commanders and senior military officials met in Mons on Nov. 22 to 23 for the 9th NATO CIS Group (NCISG) Commander's Conference.

The aim of the conference was to provide an open forum to discuss the best way of attaining the demanding requirements arising from an ever changing security environment.  NATO readiness relies on NCISG as the main provider of deployable CIS capabilities during operations and exercises.

The conference also touched on the CIS aspects of major upcoming exercises planned to foster NATO's assurance and deterrence, in particular Exercise STEADFAST COBALT 2017.  This will be a 3-level deployed and static exercise, hosted by Lithuania, in support of the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Architecture for Command and Control of NATO Operations.  The exercise will involve high density operations with both the NATO Command and the NATO Force structures.

After an introduction by the Commander of NCISG, Major General Walter Huhn, his staff presented some case studies of recent operations and exercises, leading to a discussion on process improvement and exercising to strengthen NATO's response. 

"I see NCISG's role, as a critical player in enabling NATO to perform its mission, well underway," said Major General Walter Huhn. "I am delighted with the outcome of this conference, which helped us to take stock of where we are and what needs to be done to further improve our performance."