A prominent Turkish defense company has been selected to develop a critical software system that will be used in intelligence flows at all NATO facilities around the world, in what marks one of the most important projects ever assigned by the military alliance to Türkiye.
STM on Saturday said it notched up one of the biggest export successes of the Turkish defense sector in the field of software to date as it has been awarded two major contracts regarding the direction, collection, process, dissemination and use of intelligence information within NATO.
The decision was taken by the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency), which handles all acquisition, deployment and maintenance of communications and information systems for the alliance’s decision-makers and commanders.
Operating under the aegis of the Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB), STM Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret A.Ş. produces innovative and high-technology systems for local and international customers.
STM beat out competition from several leading software companies affiliated to NATO member states to land what it said was "one of the largest software development projects ever assigned by NATO to Türkiye."
STM and the NCI Agency signed two contracts after pre-award negotiations relating to the projects, officially named Intelligence Functional Services (INTEL-FS 2) - Spiral 2 and BMD functions in INTEL-FS Backend Services (I2BE) and User Applications (I2UA).
"The software that will be developed by STM will support NATO commands in direction, collection, process, dissemination, and use of intelligence information. All NATO Commands and military bases around the world will manage their intelligence flow through the software that STM will develop and modernize," the company said.
New breakthrough
The INTEL-FS2 projects are expected to be completed in three-and-half years.
Ismail Demir, head of SBB, hailed the agreements, which the STM emphasized are "one of the largest contracts won by a Turkish company from the NCI Agency."
Türkiye has reached the stage of transferring its software competencies to key international institutions and organizations, Demir told Anadolu Agency (AA).
STM General Manager Özgür Güleryüz said the firm has a longstanding working relationship with NATO, providing solutions in various areas, particularly software and defense.
STM delivered the NATO Integration Core Project, which will significantly enhance battlefield situational awareness, and has provided software for command and control units of various countries in Afghanistan over the past 10 years, he said.
The new deal for the "critical software" is one of the largest export projects that Türkiye has ever received from NATO related to software development, Güleryüz asserted.
The company said the INTEL-FS2 development will break new ground in terms of the technology to be applied and the solutions it will offer. INTEL-FS2 is among the first projects to be developed for NATO under an agile software development methodology approach.
The project, which will be developed and run on NATO's own platform, also includes data integration aspects, and will feature a distributed and extendable structure based on microservices architecture.
Turkish engineers
Güleryüz said the project represented a very important success for Türkiye in the field of software exports.
"Building on our capabilities in software development, we will now be ensuring the technological transformation of NATO's intelligence infrastructure. Through the INTEL-FS2 project, NATO commands will have access to all kinds of intelligence data with modern user interfaces providing high user experience. The entire project will be carried out by Turkish engineers. We established our project team of about 100 experts," he noted.
Güleryüz said they would develop software services for the back-end, related to the collection, distribution and use of intelligence information and will concentrate on user applications with modern user interfaces using state-of-the-art technology.
"INTEL-FS2 will stand as a major integration project that brings together different software systems, and the scalability of the system is very important," he added.
Güleryüz said that the project would bring considerable experience to STM, including operational capabilities in data analytics applications.
"The experience and knowledge that we will gain through the project will mean that we will always be ready to meet similar requirements of our national intelligence and security units," he said.
Stressing the export significance of the INTEL-FS2 Projects, Güleryüz said, "It is a source of pride for us that INTEL-FS2 is one of the largest export projects that Türkiye has ever received from NATO related to software development. Our engineering experience in defense and informatics will continue contributing to Türkiye’s export targets through high value-added products and solutions."
STM experience
STM has previously carried out several other major projects for NATO.
STM ThinkTech has provided consultancy services for a broad range of customers, including NATO, and civil and local organizations, and has in the past delivered decision support systems to NATO.
The NATO SHAPE Integrated Elasticity Decision Support Model developed by STM supports NATO's decision-making processes in the face of strategic shocks, such as pandemics, large-scale power outages, cyberattacks and mass human migrations, and plays an important role in the accurate analysis of the effects of complex large-scale problems and in the determination of roadmaps established by decision-makers.
STM, which also carries out projects for NATO in the field of command and control, has successfully completed the NATO Integration Core (INT-CORE) Project, ensuring the provision of significant support to situational awareness across the battlefield.
INT-CORE provides accurate information to decision-makers at the right time, and incorporates command-and-control work processes that can support the distribution of information related to command-and-control, joint picture, battlefield and missions.
STM also delivered the NATO Afghanistan Mission Network Integration Core (AMN INT CORE) Project, and has signed a Goodwill Protocol for collaboration in maritime security with the NATO Maritime Security Centre of Excellence in June 2022.