TACTIQL is one of the 14 companies selected for Phase 2 of the NATO DIANA programme, which is designed to provide tailored support to accelerate adoption of innovative technologies.
In this blog post, the TACTIQL team tell us more about how they are leveraging their solution to revolutionise defence interoperability.
What does your company do and what is the solution you proposed to the DIANA challenge?
TACTIQL is a Canadian Armed Forces veteran-founded, owned, and operated defence technology company.
Our software solution, FULCRUM, automatically standardises data from any Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance sensor in real-time, enabling integration-free interoperability with Command, Control, and Intelligence software. FULCRUM also enables the translation of the resulting data into and between standard message formats, ensuring that end-users receive the information required to decide and act faster – and more confidently – than our adversaries.
Our mission is simple: to continuously conceive, build, and deliver impactful defence-first technologies that enable interoperability and strengthen allied competitiveness.
What problem does your solution solve?
Sensor data is generated in a wide variety of formats, and at increasing velocity and volume. When sensor data is not standardised, it is not interoperable. Consequently, human operators must currently re-communicate sensor data by voice or manual data-entry, thereby slowing the decision-action cycle and challenging the operational adoption of emerging technologies. FULCRUM addresses this challenge by conditioning and enriching sensor data to be compliant with NATO-adopted standards for Digital Motion Imagery and messages, such as Cursor-on-Target and Variable Message Format.
How did the company get started?
Our company was founded to solve problems we experienced when deployed overseas and working with NATO while serving with the Canadian Armed Forces. We found that the capability required to solve the problem was non-existent in industry and that we understood the true nature of the challenge. When paired with top problem-solving and engineering talent we knew that we could solve a real problem that would have a real impact for our men and women in uniform.
Was your company already positioned as a dual-use company before DIANA? Why did you decide to apply to the programme?
The foundational Intellectual Property on which TACTIQL is built is by nature dual-use, but our focus is and will always be addressing the biggest need, and there is no higher calling than service to nation and defence of Western interests. The dual-use nature of our technology is being applied to strengthen our competitiveness, including the ability to deliver to our allies at increasing speed, scope, and scale.
How does your tech differ from competitors?
Our product addresses a gap between traditional capabilities; sensor technologies and the softwares designed to ingest and facilitate situational awareness and decision-making. Ideally sensors would generate the data in a format that the softwares can ingest. However, the problem is incredibly hard to solve from a technological perspective, and the domain is growing rapidly with the explosion of new sensors that generate data at increasing volume, velocity, and variability. The ability to remain agnostic to data source and ingest is critical to enabling our customers with the flexibility required to compete and win in the modern battlespace.
What has been your biggest success or milestone to date since starting the DIANA programme? How did participation in DIANA’s programme help make this possible?
DIANA has afforded us opportunities to engage with end-users on multiple NATO exercises that has resulted in invaluable feedback as we matured our technology in pursuit of product-market fit. Since starting DIANA we have achieved TRL 9, product-market fit, and begun to sell our product with incredibly positive results and increasing demand.
What is next on the horizon for your company or is there another milestone in the future you are excited about?
In the next phase of DIANA we are seeking opportunities with NATO allied nations to test, evaluate, and validate FULCRUM on experiments, exercises, and operational deployments. Our software, FULCRUM, is available to NATO nations for procurement via NSPA/NCIA without further competition, with DIANA's challenge call providing the competitive basis.