Ardent Defender 2019 Final Planning Conference

C-IED CoE participated to the preparation of Ex Ardent Defender 2019 planning procedures with one member of the Center. Final Planning Conference was organized and hosted by the Canadian Armed Forces Joint Counter Explosive Threat Task Force (CAF JCET TF). The conference took place from 30th of July to 2nd of Aug 2019 at Toronto Ontario, in the premises of the CAF Base Borden. Our Center is a committed participant of the Ardent Defender series of Exercises practicing the full spectrum of exploitation cycle. This year the main line of effort will be to support the “Host Nation” in Defence Capacity Building focusing in C-IED capability, contribute using realistic scenarios from conflict areas and ongoing international operations in order to fulfill the training objective which is a detailed plan through all the levels of Operations.

3rd Annual African C-IED Working group

The C-IED COE participated in the 3rd Annual Africa C-IED Working Group in Nairobi, Kenya from 29 July – 1 August 2019. The working group conducted briefings and activities, lessons learned, and ways ahead for the participants. There was intelligence and informational briefings and panel discussions that created a better understanding and situational awareness of the threats and patterns along with regional assessments on the continent.

Additionally, there were discussions about the unique drivers of localized conflicts, and demonstrations were offered as training modules. For instance, there was a demonstration on different types of suicide vests and how to perform a Level 1 Exploitation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Moreover, the working group expanded the discussions from the tactical level to broader topics within the operational and strategic level.

NATO OSINT Course

The attendance to the OSINT course at the NATO School has been an excellent experience. Being divided into two phases (basic and advanced, one each week), it shows in ascending order, contents and knowledge about several approaches of searching information the internet, “deep dark web” and social networks, adapted to each type of information requirements. The contents and tools handled during the practical sessions provided information with already filtered results, reducing the excessive number of sources to analyze.

Along the daily practices (individually the first week and by group, the second one) it was found that the use of these tools and web pages, facilitates the obtaining of quality results in optimal time. The application of techniques of reliability discrimination of sources as well as the programming tasks methods with credible indicators applicable to any collection task is highly valued. For all the above mentioned reasons, it is considered as a beneficial course and suitable for any component of the CoE, not only focused to intel analyst, but also to any other area (operations, logistics, EOD, etc...).

NATO Centre of Excellence Market Place, Brussels (15-16 July)

On 15 and 16 July the C-IED CoE participated in the NATO CoE Marketplace event with a display in Brussels. A good opportunity for the Centre to give an overview of the activities we have executed and supported the last year, but also what we can do for our nations, partners and NATO in the future. Our great efforts are also recognized by Deputy Secretary General of NATO, Rose Eilene Gottemoeller, who thanked us for the great work we did so far.