The fifth meeting of the Civil Consultation, Command and Control Board/Spectrum Capability Panel 3 (NATO C3B CaP3) was held last 25-26 April in Brussels, chaired by Rick Barfoot of C3 Staff (NATO C3S) and Stephen Jones from the Office of Communications (OFCOM). Portugal was represented by the Armed Forces General Staff and ANACOM.
The CaP3 group's aim in the scope of Atlantic Alliance defence capabilities is to provide sufficient spectrum resources to ensure that NATO military forces have access to enough spectrum to fulfil their mission, to harmonise military use of radio frequencies among NATO allies and to cooperate with countries of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC)/Partnership for Peace (PfP) in promoting similar radio spectrum usage.
Various subjects were debated during the 5th CaP3 meeting, among which the following stand out:
(i) A possible separation in time of military and civilian/military meetings of CaP3 was discussed, in order to give its members time to align positions at national level and be able to make decisions at the civilian/military sessions. This organisational question will be raised again at the next meeting;
(ii) NATO’s preliminary military positions for the next World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15), developed in military session, were made known; the civilian representatives now became involved and were asked to comment on those preliminary military positions and to collaborate in efforts to prepare NATO for WRC-15;
(iii) With the goal of beginning revision of the NATO Joint Frequency Agreement (NJFA) dating from 2002, the grounds (still preliminary) that should orient that revision were presented, outlined in military session; the aim is to entirely revise the NJFA’s structure by classifying spectrum (band to band) in five different classes. The definitions and applicability of each of the proposed classes were debated at length;
(iv) An explanation was given warning of potential interference between a new civilian system, digital air-to-ground communications (DA2GC), using long term evolution (LTE) technology, and radars operating in 5 GHz; NATO recommends that use of the 5855-5875 MHz band be discouraged for DA2GC, as other options/bands are likewise being studied.
The CaP3 group’s next meeting in civilian/military session has been scheduled for 30-31 October 2013.
