A new planning tool is going to be used in the support of EU Crisis Response planning. The tool is called “Intra-theatre Mobility Capability”, well known as “ITMC” tool. In effect, it is a decision-support tool at Political-Military level (Ministries of Defence, European External Action Service, for instance) to evaluate deployment options and produce timelines, cost and other management information that could help inform to formulate a course of action for either military operation or civilian mission. The ITMC tool was developed through EDA’s operational budget.
On 28-29 February 2012, a validation session of the tool was conducted at the EDA, to validate its capacity and suitability in the support of EU decision-making process. The session was attended by the representatives from EU Military Staff (EUMS) and Member States, and chaired by the EDA. Presentation was given by the EU Movement Planning Cell (as a part of the EUMS) on the EU current organisation and decision-making process, in order to inform in which stage the tool can be of use.
In addition, different deployment options and scenarios were run throughout the validation session (with fictitious areas of deployment) so as to thoroughly exploit the capacity of the tool and analyse the results.
Compatibility with the NATO tool (called “LOGFAS”) was tested by exporting data from and importing it into the ITMC tool. The interaction between ITMC and LOGFAS tool was successfully completed. Having mentioned NATO, this tool is complementary to NATO’s LOGFAS tool as both are playing roles at different stage of the planning process. The ITMC comes to advise on which resources (financial, transportation assets, infrastructure) are needed to deploy the troops to a certain area, whereas LOGFAS software is designated to create detail deployment plan and to deconflict the deployment with Troop Contributing Nations.
In fact, the tool will not only be used by EUMS; most Member States have indicated that the capacity of ITMC tool fits their requirements and needs. It is also acknowledged by several Member States that the tool is user friendly and able to run simulations in few seconds.
ITMC is now validated as a user-friendly, flexible, not costly and compatible with NATO LOGFAS tool. It is expected to be widely used in EU environment.