Appendix D. The Afghanistan Mission Network (AMN) Profile of NATO Interoperability Standards

D.1. General

285. NATO, through its interoperability directive, has recognized that widespread interoperability is a key component in achieving effective and efficient operations. In many of the operations world-wide in which the military of the NATO nations are engaged, they participate together with a wide variety of the military of other nations and non-military organizations on the ground. The NATO Interoperability Standards and Profile (NISP) provides the necessary guidance and technical components to support project implementations and transition to NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC).

D.1.1. Authorised Version

286. The standards extant for the AMN are described in the NISP. This is published as ADatP-34 by the NATO C3 Board. As part of the NISP, an AMN Profile of NATO Interoperability Standards has been published among the several operational profiles permitted as part of ADatP-34. These are the extant and NATO agreed list of practical standards to achieve immediately usable interoperability between the national network extensions of the NATO nations, coalition partners and NATO provided capabilities.

287. Nations participating in the AMN have agreed to comply with the AMN joining instructions, of which these standards form an integral part.

D.1.2. Application

288. The AMN Profile will be used in the implementation of NATO Common Funded Systems. Nations participating in AMN agree to use this profile at Network Interconnection Points (NIPs) and at other Service Interoperability Points as applicable.

289. NNEC Services must be able to function in a network environment containing firewalls and various routing and filtering schemes; therefore, developers must use standard and well-known ports wherever possible, and document non-standard ports as part of their service interface. Service developers must assume network behaviour and performance consistent with the existing limits of these networks, taking bandwidth limitations and potentially unreliable networks into account.

D.1.3. Life-Cycle of Standards

290. ADatP-34 defines four stages within the life-cycle of a standard: emerging, mandatory, fading and retired^[4]. In those situations where multiple stages are mentioned, the AMN Profile recommends dates by which the transition to the next stage is to be completed by all AMN members. If a TCN (or NCI Agency) decides to implement emerging standards it is her responsibility to maintain backwards compatibility to the mandatory standard.

D.1.4. Forthcoming/Agreed Changes

D.1.4.1. Indicating Changes to the AMN Profile

291. The AMN Profile is managed within volume 4 of the Joining, Membership and Exit Instructions (JMEI) (i.e. Vol 4 of the JMEI as currently published as NCI Agency Technical Report TR-2013/ACO008868/04). This document is oriented around the AMN Profile of NATO Interoperability Standards.

292. All changes proposed to this profile must be via the process outlined at section 2.7 of the JMEI Volume 4. All changes are to be first collectively agreed via the AMN Architecture Working Group (AWG). The NCI Agency acts as the custodian for the AMN Profile and is to be used as the conduit for changes (via her dual membership of the AMN AWG and IPCat).

D.1.4.2. Summary of Changes to the AMN Profile

293. The table below summarizes the main changes between the AMN Profile as published in ADaTP-34(G) to the standards cited in the tables of this document.

Table D.1. Summary of Changes to the AMN Profile

Table/Subject	Key updates
General (applies to all tables)	Fuller citation of standards to enable users to accurately identify and locate the standards. Addition of standards that are already active on the AMN but to-date had not been recorded in the profile. Consistent application of the ADatP-34 stages of the life-cycle of a standard (Emerging, Mandatory etc).
Table D.2: Transmission IA Services Standards	Citing of source of configuration settings necessary to ensure interoperability when different cryptographic device
Table D.3: Edge Transport Services and Communications Equipment Standards	Update/addition of IPv6 routing standards. This reflects the requirement that all new equipment, services and applications must support a dual IPv4/IPv6 stack implementation to future-proof the AMN for the long term.
Table D.4: Packet-based Communications Access Services Standards	Update/addition of IPv6 addressing standards (see reason above). Removal of Network Address Translation (NAT) as an option for joining nations.
Table D.5: Communications Access IA Services Standards	Removal/Retirement of Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol version 1.0.
Table D.6: Infrastructure Services Standards	Update to advice on distributed time services synchronization. Update to advice on storing and accessing information about the time of events and transactions, with particular attention to databases. Complete exclusion of Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) as an option. Addition of a guidance note on Operating Systems, including rational for choice of Win 7 Enterprise for client PCs.
Table D.7: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform services and data standards	Indication of intent to move to HyperText Markup Language, Version 5 (HTML 5) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 3.
Table D.8: Unified Communication and Collaboration Services and Data Standards	Introduction of Secure Communications Interoperability Protocol. SCIP as an option for Operation Resolute Support. Clarification that Informal messaging (SMTP e-mail) must be labelled to a particular convention in the message header field “Keywords”. Creation of a Basic and Enhanced XMPP profile for text-based collaboration services
Table D.9: Information Management Services and Data Standards	Addition of guidance on File Naming
Table D.10: Enterprise Support Geospatial Services and Data Standards	Citing of standards for Coordinate Reference Systems, GeoWeb Service Interfaces, Geo-Analytical Services, 3D Perspective Viewers, WGS84, DTED and OpenGIS Coordinate Transformation Service
Table D.11: General Data Format Standards	Guidance notes for AMN on use of alpha-3 (three-letter codes)
Table D.12: Battlespace Management Interoperability Protocols and Standards	Citing of standards for Interoperability of Friendly Force Tracking Systems (FFTS) Reiteration of required MIP standards, and noting long term direction Corrections to citation of Message Text Format (MTF) messages (STANAG 7149).
Table D.13: Biometric Data and System Interoperability Protocols and Standards	Nil
Table D.14: JISR Interoperability Protocols and Standards	Nil
Table D.15: User Application Standards	Indication of intent to move to HyperText Markup Language, Version 5 (HTML 5) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 3. Update to Office Open XML File Formats and introduction of Open Document Formants. Addition of archiving file formats (triggered through research for AMN JMEI volume 3 (Exiting the AMN). Full section on Representation of Dates and Times Advice on Internationalization of Web Design and Applications
Table D.16: Human-to-human interoperability Standards	Citation of NATO Glossary of terms and definitions Recommendation for Standardised Language Profile (SLP) to be added to Operational Profile.
Table D.17: Service Management and Control Interoperability Standards	Nil

D.1.5. Relationship to NATO C3 Classification Taxonomy

294. The AMN has been designed and is managed as far as possible using a service approach. The AMN Services are based on the NATO C3 Classification Taxonomy AC/322-N(2012)0092-AS1.

295. The C3 Classification Taxonomy is used to identify particular services and associated Service Interoperability Point where two entities will interface and the standards in use by the relevant systems.

296. Within Volume 4 of the AMN JMEI, the implementation of a standard (where required) is described within an annex associated with each service.

297. The C3 Classification Taxonomy has been used to structure the AMN Profile, commencing with Communications and working up the Taxonomy.

^[4]The FMN Profile has been further refined and also additionally uses 4 obligation categories of Mandatory, Conditional, Recommended and Optional to assist with conformity assessments. Where relevant these have also been used in an AMN context.