Battlespace Advantage Symposium 2027
23-24 March 2027
Venue:
IET, Savoy Place, London
BATTLESPACE ADVANTAGE SYMPOSIUM
Operating the Integrated Force
Welcome to the Battlespace Advantage Symposium 2027 presented by the Integrated Warfare Centre (IWC), part of the Cyber & Specialist Operations Command (CSOC).
Building on the inaugural symposium in 2026, Battlespace Advantage Symposium 2027 brings together UK Defence, NATO Allies, international partners, industry and academia to explore the practical realities of Operating the Integrated Force.
As military operations become increasingly dependent on interconnected capabilities across Land, Maritime, Air, Space, Cyber, the Electromagnetic Environment and the Information Domain, integration offers significant operational advantage. However, it also creates new dependencies, complexities and vulnerabilities that adversaries may seek to exploit.
Battlespace Advantage Symnposium 2027 examines how integration can be translated into operational effect within NATO Deterrence and Defence, considering the UK contribution from the homeland to the European theatre. The symposium will explore how forces integrate capabilities, protect critical dependencies, and maintain resilience when systems, networks and relationships are contested, degraded or denied.
Led by the Integrated Warfare Centre and delivered with partners across Defence, NATO, industry and academia, Battlespace Advantage Symposium 2027 provides a forum for collaboration, challenge and practical discussion on how the Integrated Force can generate and sustain Battlespace Advantage in complex operational environments.
Why this event is different
The Battlespace Advantage Symposium is focused on the mission threads, organisations, and capabilities vital to multi-domain operations.
It will consider how wider socio-technical system comes together to generate operational effect.
The symposium will place particular emphasis on the practical requirements for integration: Command and Control, Data, Networks, Authorities, Relationships, Interoperability, Resilience, Training and Exercising, Doctrine, Autonomy, and the interaction between all within the wider system.
The Symposium is therefore not primarily a technology showcase or discussion of future concepts. It is about operationalising integration and identifying the actions necessary to translate Policy, Concepts and Capability into credible Operational Advantage.
Purpose
The purpose of the Battlespace Advantage Symposium 2027 is to:
Turn Multi-Domain Integration into practical operational advantage.
- Explore the requirements for operating the Integrated Force in support of NATO Deterrence and Defence.
- Build a shared understanding on what integration is, where it creates advantage and where it may introduce unnecessary complexity or vulnerability.
- Test assumptions on mission network resilience in contested environments and identify training needs.
- Idendify better coherence of data, cyber, autonomy and emerging technologies across the Integrated Force, including interoperability between UK, NATO and partners.
- Connect military, industry and academia to develop practical operational solutions.
The Symposium should generate actionable insights, not simply discussion, informing future capability development, experimentation, exercising and the continuous Integrated Force development.
Themes for the Battlespace Advantage Symposium 2027
A consistent golden thread of Multi-Domain Operations will run throughout both days with a focus on Integration and Resilience.
ENABLE – Commanding and Enabling the UK Contribution to NATO
How does the UK’s strategic command and control architecture enable concurrent operations at home and abroad?
This theme will examine how the UK acts as a command and enabling hub, connecting strategic direction and national capabilities to NATO operations and homeland defence. It will explore whether current command relationships, authorities and decision-making structures can support multiple mission tasks concurrently, while maintaining prioritisation, resilience and operational tempo.
This theme explores whether UK command structures and decision-making can effectively coordinate and sustain concurrent NATO operations and homeland defence missions.
PROTECT – Protecting Strategic Lines of Communication
How do we protect the physical and digital connections upon which NATO reinforcement and operations depend?
This theme will explore the protection and sustainment of critical operational networks, systems and lines of communication, considering how Maritime, Air, Land, Space, Cyber and other capabilities combine to deliver operational effect. It will examine the balance between greater connectivity and the vulnerabilities this can create, and how resilience, adaptability and alternative ways of operating can be designed into the force.
This theme explores how NATO’s critical physical and digital networks can be protected and sustained, balancing connectivity with resilience against disruption and attack.
THE ADVERSARY – Exploiting the Integrated Force
How might an adversary exploit the dependencies and vulnerabilities created by greater integration?
w far the Integrated Force extends and where its less visible dependencies may create disproportionate risk. It will consider how an adversary could target peripheral, enabling or supposedly lower-priority elements of the system to generate wider operational disruption, exposing vulnerabilities that may not be apparent when capabilities are viewed in isolation.
This theme explores how adversaries could exploit the dependencies and vulnerabilities of an integrated force to create disproportionate operational disruption.
DEFEND – NATO Regional Plans
How does NATO translate integration into operational effect at scale?
Using NATO regional planning as the context, this theme will explore how national and NATO capabilities must integrate across Commands, Domains and Nations to effectively deliver credible deterrence and defence. Attention should be given to command relationships, interoperability, data, authorities and the practical challenges of multinational integration.
This theme explores how NATO integrates national capabilities across commands, domains and nations to deliver credible deterrence and defence at scale.
EXPLOIT – Autonomy, Cyber and Data Integration
How do we exploit emerging technologies without creating new operational vulnerabilities?
This theme will examine the increasing importance of data, cyber capability and autonomy to the Integrated Force. It will explore how these capabilities support decision advantage, operational tempo and mass, while addressing challenges around interoperability, trust, resilience, security and contested connectivity. The focus should remain on operational utility rather than technology for technology’s sake.
This theme explores how data, cyber and autonomous capabilities can be integrated to deliver operational advantage while maintaining resilience, security and interoperability.
PREPARE & DETER – Exercising Integrated Forces
How do we know that the Integrated Force will work?
This theme will examine how NATO and its nations train, experiment and exercise at the scale and complexity required for modern deterrence and defence. Using Exercise STEADFAST DEFENDER 27 and wider NATO activity as a potential context, discussion should consider how exercising can expose vulnerabilities, validate integration and strengthen operational readiness. The focus is on moving from assumed interoperability to demonstrated interoperability.
This theme explores how training, experimentation and exercising can validate integration, expose vulnerabilities and demonstrate operational readiness across the Integrated Force.
EVENT DETAILS
The Battlespace Advantage Symposium 2027 will be held in London on 23-24 March 2027.
The two-day event will bring together senior military leaders, NATO and international partners, government, operational practitioners, industry and academia.
Delegates: Participants from across the Defence enterprise, allied forces, government departments, and the defence industrial sector, including:
- Cyber & Specialist Operations Command
- Royal Navy
- British Army
- Royal Air Force
- Military Strategic Headquarters (MSHQ)
- National Armaments Directorate Group (NADG)
- UK Space Command
- Ministry of Defence and partner nations
- NATO
- Defence industry
The Symposium’s discussions and outputs will support continued Integrated Force development, advance NATO interoperability and determine practical actions to generate and sustain Battlespace Advantage.
Dominating the Skies: Agile, Integrated and Ready
‘In 2026, the rate of change in the global strategic environment shows no signs of abating, if anything, the tempo is increasing. However, there is a constant – the need for air and space power to dominate the skies and beyond. Mastering our domain is what we do; to provide the joint and coalition force with the freedom of action it needs to secure the battlespace, our nations, our interests, and our way of life. This is the ultimate team game; we cannot do this alone.
GASCC26 will explore the challenge and stimulate debate amongst the team who are responsible for delivering agility, integration, and readiness to global air and space power today, tomorrow and together. I look forward to seeing you at the merge!’
Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth
Chief of the Air Staff, Royal Air Force
About the Global Air & Space Chiefs’ Conference
The Chief of the Air Staff’s Global Air & Space Chiefs’ Conference brings together global leaders in Air and Space Power with captains of industry and technology enhanced by experts from international academia.
The conference explores the strategic challenges facing the Royal Air Force and Whole Force partners as well as international partners and global allies through a combination of keynote speakers, presentations and diverse panels formed of military, academic, industrial and other scientific and practitioner experts. The conference annually attracts 550 senior military and business personnel, including over 50 chiefs of the air and space forces and other force commands. It leads into the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) at RAF Fairford.
Held at the Institution of Engineering & Technology, Savoy Place, London, the Global Air and Space Chiefs’ Conference features conference, networking areas and displays and an exclusive reception on the evening of Day One. The conference is also broadcast for virtual attendees.
Conference Theme:
Dominating the Skies and Beyond – Agile, Integrated and Ready
The conference theme explores three key capability areas: space, nuclear and integrated air and missile defence. These focus areas are critical to the UK and our fellow air and space chiefs as we develop and deliver domination of the skies.
Day 1 culminates with a panel with the UK’s single Service chiefs to look at how the UK intends to deliver an integrated force. In addition to keynotes from a senior UK minister, the Chief of the Air Staff and international air and space commanders, Day 2 reviews the air and space power lessons in recent conflicts that will enable us to improve our ability to be Agile, Integrated and Ready for the next conflict.
The conference features the following sessions plus Keynote speeches.
1. Back to the Future – Nuclear Air Power
The recent decision to procure the F-35A provides an opportunity for the RAF to return to the nuclear role. After a three-decade sabbatical, the RAF must refresh its ‘nuclear IQ.’ AVM Jim Beck, Director Capability, will lead the first session with informed views from Lieutenant General Stéphane Virem, Strategic Air Force Commander, French Air & Space Force, an Indo-Pacific expert, and a leading industrial figure to discuss re-introducing a critical capability to the UK’s and NATO’s inventory.
2. Space
The second session will explore the space domain. Following a keynote address, a panel of space experts and practitioners will examine how we achieve optimum space domain awareness and what can be done to counter threats to this essential domain.
3. Putting the Integrated into IAMD
With NATO First and Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) both central tenets of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review, the third session brings both elements together. Air Vice-Marshal Andy Martin, the UK’s recently appointed Director IAMD, will chair a panel to look at the challenges and opportunities of developing and delivering IAMD, with valuable input from an international air chief, RAND Europe, and industry.
4. Delivering the Integrated Force
The last panel of Day 1 brings the four UK single Service chiefs together on one panel to discuss how they develop and deliver the integrated approach.
5. Identifying the Correct Lessons from Today’s Conflicts
The final panel debates the challenges and opportunities of innovating for multi-domain effect. Air Marshal Al Marshall, the RAF’s Air & Space Commander, will lead the session supported by an international chief, RUSI’s Dr Jack Watling, and a senior industry figure.
Keynote speakers:
- Secretary of State for Defence, Rt Hon John Healey
- Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth, Chief of the Air Staff, Royal Air Force
- Two international air and space force commanders
Other key speakers include:
- General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, Royal Navy
- General Sir Rob Magowan, Commander, Cyber & Specialist Operations Command (CSOC)
- General Sir Roly Walker, Chief of the General Staff, British Army
- Air Marshal Al Marshall, Air & Space Commander, Royal Air Force
- Lieutenant General Stéphane Virem, Strategic Air Force Commander, French Air & Space Force
- Major General Paul Tedman, Commander, UK Space Command
- Air Vice-Marshal Jim Beck, Director Capability Royal Air Force
- Air Vice-Marshal Andy Martin, Director IAMD, Royal Air Force
International Air & Space Commanders from key allies and partners will join each of the panels.