Until recently, coalition intelligence sharing has often relied on conventional workplace IT solutions: emails, intelligence reports in manila envelopes, images shared on large network file systems, even hand-carried data on USB drives.
“That was typically how it was done before,” Sonny Rosenkilde, Senior Systems Engineer at Terma and former Systems Engineer at the Danish Defense says. “USB sticks and PowerPoint slides passed between nations”.
That reality is precisely what NATO has been trying to change. And at CWIX 2025, its annual interoperability exercise in Poland, Denmark demonstrated a new capability the alliance now considers critical: It proved it can share intelligence in real-time with allied forces inside NATO’s federated mission network.
Following testing at CWIX 2025 at the Joint Force Training Center in Bydgoszcz, the Danish intelligence platform JIMAPS successfully completed NATO’s Assurance, Verification and Validation (AV&V) approval process. The result confirms that its ISR Library and Streaming functionality satisfies a comprehensive NATO Standardization Agreement, STANAG 4559, which specifies how to exchange structured intelligence products and live data streams with other NATO nations.
The platform exceeded NATO’s required threshold to pass and is now accepted on the current interoperability baseline known as “spiral 4.”
JIMAPS has been developed by Terma, in close collaboration with the Danish Defence Acquisition and Logistics Organisation with the specific purpose of delivering this capability to the Danish Armed Forces.
What that means in plain terms is that Denmark can now plug its intelligence system directly into NATO’s operational network and exchange intelligence with allies without technological barriers or national ad-hoc solutions.
“This is the first time Denmark has had a system formally validated against a NATO spiral,” Sonny Rosenkilde explains. “Now we can actually say: yes, Denmark has this capability.”
For anyone used to working with networks and computers, sharing files and live streaming information sounds rather trivial, so why is this a big deal?
The thing is; the challenge is not sending data. Anyone can send a file.
The challenge is sending the right data, to the right people, across multiple national systems – while respecting security classifications, releasability rules and national restrictions, all at once.
“NATO standards don’t tell you exactly how to build your system,” Sonny Rosenkilde says. “They define what the system must be able to do. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation.”
In a coalition, those interpretations can collide. One nation’s system may technically comply with the standard while behaving differently from another’s. The result is that systems appear interoperable on paper but fail when connected to real partners.
CWIX exists to expose and eliminate those misunderstandings – and to make sure systems designed for interoperability on NATO missions can actually talk to each other in a secure and safe fashion.
CWIX, short for Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exploration, Experimentation Examination Exercise, is NATO’s annual stress test for multinational command, control and intelligence systems. It is not a demonstration environment. National systems are connected to a live, federated mission network and required to exchange data with other nations’ systems under real conditions.
“You don’t test against a copy of yourself,” Christian Glinsvad who lead the AV&V test of Danmark’s JIMAPS system explains. “You test against at least two other nations. And they have to confirm they received your data correctly.”
Every exchange must be documented and audited. Evidence is uploaded. Screenshots are reviewed. Independent NATO auditors verify that systems behave as required.
“If both partners say ‘yes, we received it and it’s correct,’ and the evidence checks out, then that test case passes,” Glinsvad says. “If not, the test case fails, and you lose points.”
This year, JIMAPS was tested against the Joint ISR Information Exchange specification for both ISR Library and ISR Streaming where the latter accounts for the hardest test.
Traditionally, Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance has moved slowly. Reports were compiled nationally, formatted for sharing, and distributed after the fact. That process made real-time cooperation difficult and limited sharing actual and current situational awareness.
Live intelligence sharing changes that. Structured intelligence products can be exchanged directly between national systems, and selected ISR feeds (such as surveillance data) can be made visible across the coalition as events unfold.
“It’s not just about files,” Christian Glinsvad says. “It’s about being able to build a shared Common Intelligence Picture together.”
For commanders, that means faster decisions. For analysts, it means fewer parallel efforts. For coalitions, it means operating from a common understanding rather than stitching together separate national views.
With the CWIX approval of the JIMAPS system, Denmark moves from operating alongside coalition intelligence fusion cells to operating inside them.
That distinction matters in NATO force planning. The alliance increasingly asks contributing nations which interoperability “spiral” they support (basically what level of the systems has passed), where they were tested, and whether the capability has been validated in a multinational environment.
“Now, when Denmark contributes an intelligence unit to NATO, we can tick that box,” Sonny Rosenkilde says. “We’ve tested it. We’ve passed it.”
In practical terms, that reduces friction when Danish forces are assigned to multinational missions or exercises. Systems that have already been validated require less integration effort on deployment, allowing operations to focus on the mission rather than on making networks talk to each other.
Inside NATO, interoperability has quietly become a capability in its own right. Nations that can connect quickly shape operations earlier and more effectively. Those that cannot are forced to adapt later.
In that sense, CWIX measures readiness. And Denmark’s result places it among a smaller group of allies that NATO can rely on to exchange intelligence digitally from the outset of joint operations. And for NATO, information superiority is the key to success in modern, multi-domain warfare.