About JATEC

About the Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre

What is JATEC?

JATEC is the first joint NATO–Ukraine organization in the NATO Command Structure and looks at both military and civilian aspects of the modern conflict.

Endorsed at the 2024 Washington Summit, it was inaugurated in February 2025 in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

One year on, JATEC is no longer a concept. It is a running NATO – Ukraine engine that transforms combat-proven operational insights from Russia’s war against Ukraine into practical evolution, strengthening interoperability and accelerating adaptation where it matters most.

JATEC gathers battlefield insights, develops recommendations for NATO and Ukraine, and advances interoperability between both. It serves as a key enabler of NATO – Ukraine cooperation, a driver of operationally informed innovation, and a catalyst for transformation.

Subordinated to Allied Command Transformation, JATEC reflects NATO’s long-term vision of Ukraine as an essential and interoperable partner. Its civil-military structure enables a comprehensive whole-of-society approach, recognizing that modern defence extends beyond the military domain.

What does JATEC do?

• Identify emerging trends from the modern battlefield;
• Integrate operational insights from Ukrainian subject matter experts;
• Apply analytical methods to translate data into a NATO context;
• Deliver reports, studies, and recommendations to support NATO’s and Ukraine’s transformation.

How does JATEC do it?

• Create Communities of Interest;
• Address both military and civilian aspects of modern conflict (total defence, resilience);
• Drive operationally informed innovation (Innovation Challenges);
• Enhance realism of NATO’s collective training.

How does JATEC contribute to accelerating innovation and technological interoperability?

In 2025, together with ACT, JATEC organised three Innovation Challenges: on guided aerial bombs, on fibre-optic FPV drones and on medical evacuation, drawing record submissions and involving Ukrainian jury experts to provide immediate feedback to proposed solutions. By bringing together innovators, industry, start-ups, think tanks, academia, and military expertise, JATEC enables the identification of practical solutions and supports rapid prototyping and testing in operational environments.

Those strategic engagements accelerate military technology’s growth, boosts battlefield superiority, and integrate Ukraine’s combat insights into scalable NATO technologies, enabling JATEC to become a bridge for innovations between Ukraine and NATO.

How does JATEC support NATO’s transformation?

JATEC gathers and analyses insights from Russia’s war against Ukraine and provides NATO with recommendations for doctrine development, planning, and collective training, enhancing the Alliance’s adaptability to modern warfare.

Through various initiatives, seminars, conferences and workshops, JATEC builds expert communities in operational analysis, data science, and artificial intelligence.

2025 marked several historic firsts:

• During REPMUS/Dynamic Messenger 2025, the Ukrainian Navy led the opposing force in a NATO exercise, integrating battlefield experience into NATO’s collective training.
• JATEC representatives supported the RED HIENA 45 strategic-level wargame, contributing to long-term policy considerations.
• Ukrainian experts also participated for the first time in LOYAL DOLOS 2025, NATO’s Article V exercise.

In 2026, JATEC continues to expand its contribution to NATO’s transformation through selected activities and events. So far these include OPFOR development for NATO exercises, workshops on modernising education and integrating new technologies, and the Information Resilience Seminar, which brought together NATO practitioners and Ukrainian experts to address challenges in the cognitive domain.

This is interoperability in action: practical integration, shared planning, and mutual adaptation. Ukraine contributes battlefield experience, while NATO provides frameworks, standards, and collective defence structures. Together, they strengthen a more coherent and capable security architecture.

What is the status of JATEC?

JATEC was inaugurated in February 2025 in Bydgoszcz, only six months after the Washington Summit decision. While JATEC is still operating with limited, but steadily growing resources, it is already bringing value to the Alliance and to Ukraine.

Within the first year, the Centre established a structured program of work across five main lines of effort:

1. warfare development;
2. C4 & digitalization;
3. human dimension & education;
4. total defence; and
5. transformation & interoperability.

This broad approach reflects the reality of modern multi-domain warfare and reinforces JATEC’s core purpose: gathering insight from Russia’s war against Ukraine and providing actionable recommendations for the Alliance and Ukraine to transform.

Over the course of the first year, JATEC conducted about 30 workshops, and 160 internal and external engagements. A hallmark of JATEC’s first year has been its central role in the Innovation Challenges, working alongside Allied Command Transformation and Ukrainian experts. Through direct integration of Ukrainian operational experience into planning, execution and testing of innovative solutions, JATEC aimed to align innovation with real-world operational demands. Across all our initiatives, one principle was clear: innovation must occur at the speed of relevance.

JATEC will achieve its next milestone – Mission Capability Level – in the summer of 2026.