On 1-5 February, Lockheed Martin’s Center for Innovation in Suffolk (Virginia, USA) hosted the wargame event of the missile defence experimentation campaign “Nimble Titan 2016”, which brought together policymakers and military practitioners from 22 nations to explore various aspects of employing global and regional integrated air and missile defence capabilities.
This two-year campaign is led by the US Strategic Command and provides an open, unclassified and innovative platform for the United States and their allies and partners from NATO and non-NATO Europe, Persian Gulf and Asia-Pacific area to experiment with new approaches to countering ballistic and cruise missile threats emanating from state and non-state actors. Estonia has been participating in this campaign since 2013 with a small inter-agency team which includes representatives of the foreign affairs and defence ministries as well as of the Estonian Air Force. An ICDS research fellow contributed to this particular event in Suffolk as a third-party player in the rapidly evolving crisis scenario of the wargame – a role much appreciated by the participants of the experiment seeking to understand and manage the effects of their policies, plans and crisis decisions on the third countries not directly involved in a fictitious conflict scenario (e.g. affected by the ballistic missile intercept above their territory). Such ICDS participation not only enhances Estonia’s profile in a policy area of strategic importance to the US and NATO but also provides one of the best avenues to increasing and maintaining ICDS competence in the field of integrated air and missile defence. (For more information about Nimble Titan, visit US Stratcom website here)