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New Innovation Advisory Board to boost NATO’s MUS initiative

Maritime May 13, 2020

Participants of the NATO Maritime Unmanned Systems (MUS) initiative have created a new Innovation Advisory Board to address multiple challenges for developing unmanned solutions operating below, above and on the water.

The NATO MUS initiative was originally launched in October 2018 by 13 Allied Defence Ministers with an ambitious agenda.

Members of the Innovation Advisory Board will bring together a diverse set of backgrounds and areas of expertise from the public and private sectors, adding an important element to the MUS initiative’s work.

“The newly created MUS Innovation Advisory Board is a highly promising contribution to the NATO effort, meant to leverage fresh perspectives and creative thinking from outside the defence establishment.  This is a very exciting and practical example of NATO innovation in practice.” adds Skip Davis in his role as the NATO representative on the Innovation Advisory Board.

The first meeting of the Innovation Advisory Board in early June will focus on how unmanned systems can most effectively be integrated across the entire spectrum of the maritime domain.

At the Brussels Summit in 2018 NATO leaders reaffirmed the strategic importance of the maritime domain and the criticality of investing in new unmanned capabilities. They can complement conventional ships and serve as a force multiplier to expand the area of coverage and number of tasks Allied navies can address. Equally they offer the ability to remove military personnel from dangerous tasks such as mine clearing.

image courtesy of NATO

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Maritime Unmanned Systems MUS NATO

Post written by: Matt Brown