Photo By Sgt. Chandler Coats | U.S. Army personnel assigned to U.S. Army Europe and Africa G6, alongside Swedish...... read more read more
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CLAY KASERNE, Germany — The Swedish Armed Forces took a major step toward full operational integration with NATO during a network federation event hosted by the U.S. Army Europe and Africa (USAREUR-AF) G6 from June 2–6 at Clay Kaserne, Germany.
The event marked the culmination of over a year of coordination between USAREUR-AF G6 and Swedish military planners to integrate Sweden’s Mission Secret Network with the USAREUR-AF Mission Partner Network (MPN). This milestone enables secure information sharing, operational planning, fires coordination, and command and control between Sweden and the United States in support of NATO missions.
“The purpose of the MPN is to ensure that when the mission begins, our partners are already connected, digitally and operationally,” said Bobby Valentine, interoperability officer at USAREUR-AF G6. “For USAREUR-AF, it means Swedish forces are now part of the operational digital ecosystem, ready to plug in, contribute, and fight alongside us on day one.”
Swedish Armed Forces Lt. Col. Daniel Ängblom, Deputy Chief of G6 for Swedish Army Command, emphasized the significance of federation with the USAREUR-AF network.
“This is very important for the Swedish Armed Forces, so this will be a huge milestone for us once we have finalized the federation,” Ängblom said. “It will enable us to communicate not only to our partners and allies on the U.S. side, but also a lot of other connected partners, so it is a very important step for NATO integration.”
Network federation enables partner nations to connect their respective classified networks within a shared framework, enabling collaborative mission execution. This is achieved through NATO’s Federated Mission Networking (FMN) framework, which ensures systems are aligned across policies, security standards, and infrastructure.
“Federation allows trusted partners to share data, coordinate fires, and execute operations immediately,” Valentine said. “Instead of building connectivity in the middle of a crisis, it's already there. With federation in place, we move from reacting to anticipating, from fragmented efforts to fully synchronized operations.”
This federation event was the first official post-accession engagement between Sweden’s and USAREUR-AF’s G6 since Sweden officially joined NATO in March of last year. The year-long effort involved extensive technical testing and validation, as well as coordination at policy and operational levels.
“We do all of this interoperability work to have a decision advantage against any threat we have,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gabriel Sanchez, a USAREUR-AF G6 network engineer. “If anything happens, we know we can talk to Sweden, and Sweden can have a common operational picture with us, enabling that ‘fight tonight’ mentality.”
The Swedish delegation at Clay Kaserne included 10 soldiers and representatives with their associated equipment to conduct hands-on activities in the federation environment.
Interoperability between Allies has long been a priority for USAREUR-AF, and Mission Partner Network federation is a key component of that strategy. As threats in the European theater continue to evolve, the ability to securely share information and coordinate military responses has become increasingly important.
“It’s about the warfighter being able to put rounds downrange effectively,” said Valentine. ”We need to let the enemy waste their shells, while we hit with ours every single time. That’s what all of this is for.”
The G6 team also continues to support rapid integration of emerging artificial intelligence technologies into the Mission Partner Network, leveraging existing federations to field capabilities quickly.
“The MPN is a live, operational environment,” Valentine emphasized, highlighting the real-world significance of the MPN as opposed to a temporary system set up for a training exercise. “That is why we were able to onboard Maven Smart Systems, our AI-enabled situational awareness tool, and get it fielded in under four months. That kind of speed and impact does not happen in simulated labs. It happens when a trusted, federated network already exists and is built for execution, not experimentation.”
USAREUR-AF G6 has for years been leading efforts to establish persistent federations with multiple NATO partners, including France's 1st French Division, Germany's 10th Panzer Division, Poland, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Lithuania and Romania. These federations support operational integration for exercises, real-world missions, and future contingencies.
“The truth is, we were already postured to federate Sweden,” Valentine said. “We’ve been doing this work for nearly a decade. Our prior federations built a repeatable model, so with Sweden, we did not need to invent a process, we simply executed. From certificate exchange to directory federation and service alignment, we applied what we already knew worked.”
As Sweden joins the growing list of allies with federated connectivity, the NATO alliance takes another step forward in building the digital readiness required to deter and, if necessary, defeat emerging threats together.
| Date Taken: | 06.10.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 06.10.2025 03:06 |
| Story ID: | 500162 |
| Location: | WIESBADEN, HESSEN, DE |
| Web Views: | 711 |
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