Systematic experts support coalition forces during Bold Quest 2025

Multinational team of experts provide a wide range of assistance to several partner nations

Systematic staff from Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom and the United States played a key role in supporting the Danish Armed Forces and UK Commando Force during Bold Quest 2025, a major multinational interoperability exercise hosted by the United States at Fort Pickett, Virginia. The event brought together coalition partners to test and validate digital command and control (C2) systems and data exchange across multiple security domains.

Ensuring secure data sharing 

Systematic’s SitaWare Headquarters and SitaWare Secure Gateway (SSG) solutions were central to the Danish Army’s participation. The focus of the exercise was to verify secure communication between various information security domains—from units in the field to those in higher-echelon headquarters—and to ensure that operational data could flow seamlessly across classification boundaries.

“Our main goal was to help the Danish Armed Forces configure and validate the security gateway and confirm that they could securely share data across the full chain of command,” said Morten Weng Larsen, Senior Solution Engineer at Systematic. “We supported everything from friendly force tracking and tactical situation sharing to CBRN messaging, fire support data and radio chat, all transmitted through the SSG.”

The setup featured two security gateways integrated with cross-domain solutions (CDS) provided by Arbit Cyber Defense Systems, a close partner of Systematic. Arbit’s CDS technology was used to inspect and control data transfers between networks, ensuring that only authorized information crossed the domains.

Systematic engineers on-site assisted with installation, configuration and troubleshooting, ensuring reliable data exchange between networks with differing security requirements. The Danish 1st Brigade was able to achieve full interoperability using SitaWare systems.

In addition to supporting Denmark, Systematic personnel provided ad hoc assistance to several partner nations, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Lithuania, all of whom were testing interoperability with SitaWare during the event.

Enhancing UK fires interoperability

Systematic also supported the UK Commando Force, specifically the 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, which provides fire support to the UK Royal Marines. Working within the joint fires thread of the exercise, Systematic’s subject matter experts collaborated with the UK contingent to enable interoperability between multiple fires systems, using both the Cursor on Target (CoT) gateway for SitaWare and the SitaWare Fires Support Module.

Despite network challenges that limited activity during the short deployment window, the exercise achieved significant success in demonstrating seamless interoperability across the three systems using the Artillery Systems Cooperation Activity (ASCA) standard.

“The key takeaway was that SitaWare, FC BISA and TAK were all able to share situational awareness data through a common interoperability standard,” explained Simon Thomas, Senior Sales Support / Domain Advisor for Systematic. “Because of SitaWare’s ASCA capabilities, coalition partners were able to exchange gun target line and target data without expensive or time-consuming custom API development.”

Through ASCA interoperability, the SitaWare Fire Support Module could send target data directly to FC BISA, which then returned gun target line data. This information was visualized in 3D within SitaWare Headquarters, allowing for real-time airspace deconfliction, fratricide checks and collateral damage assessment.

“For the users, it was a real ‘penny-drop’ moment,” Thomas added. “They realized that the systems they already have can achieve a great deal simply by adhering to established interoperability standards like ASCA. That’s what interoperability is all about—achieving operational effect without having to reinvent the wheel.”

Collaborative success across nations

Across the exercise, Systematic’s multinational team of experts supported a wide range of data-sharing tasks, including:

• Establishing SitaWare Headquarters communication and C2 data exchange between Danish headquarters installations.

• Configuring cross-nation interoperability and a common operating picture for systems used by Danish, US, UK, Finnish and Lithuanian forces.

• Validating CBRN messaging through the SSG.

The exercise provided valuable insights into coalition challenges such as certificate management, domain name system and internet protocol coordination, and interoperability across differing national standards.

By the conclusion of Bold Quest 2025, both the Danish and UK forces had successfully demonstrated secure, standards-based interoperability across complex multinational networks, validating the effectiveness of SitaWare software and secure gateway capabilities.

“From our perspective, it couldn’t have gone better,” said Larsen. “SitaWare Headquarters and the SSG performed flawlessly, and the customer was very pleased with the outcome.”