Last July, the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) and the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) signed a partnership agreement to enhance cooperation and help deliver innovation at scale to the Alliance.

With this partnership agreement, the two NATO bodies agreed to join forces to foster innovation and develop disruptive solutions to address critical defence and security challenges.

DIANA is a key part of NATO’s effort to strengthen innovation capacity across the Alliance. It brings together private sector actors, governmental agencies, and academia with operational end-users, scientists, and system integrators to advance ‘deep tech’ with dual-use solutions. 

The NCI Agency is another significant player in NATO’s innovation effort. As the principal provider of digital solutions for NATO’s communications and information needs, the Agency delivers cutting-edge technology to the Alliance.

DIANA became operational in Spring 2023 and launched its first call for proposals on 19 June, seeking innovators to develop disruptive, dual-use technologies in three areas: energy resilience, sensing and surveillance, and secure information sharing. 

According to a relevant announcement, the NCI Agency is preparing to work closely with DIANA to test and validate technological solutions and their potential implementation into the NATO enterprise.

Also read: DIANA | NATO’s innovation accelerator becomes operational and launches first challenges