The Cyber Innovation Hub of the Bundeswehr (CIHBw) has won the current NATO Innovation Challenge on the topic of “Military Mobility”. With the Yarded project, the CIHBw was able to prevail against 39 competitors.
The final round of the competition took place on Tuesday, November 14, 2023, in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana. Eleven previously selected ideas battled it out for victory. A total of six NATO countries were represented in the final: Estonia, France, Germany, Canada, Poland and the USA. The German submission Yarded is a digital solution for organizing logistical processes as part of the German contribution to the NATO Response Force. Thanks to the app, the transportation of equipment and material can be organized more efficiently in the event of a sudden deployment.
The innovation project emerged from the CIHBw Innovation Challenge Logistics. A team of Bundeswehr intrapreneurs from Logistics Battalion 163 RSOM, the MVP Factory and VisiTrans GmbH were responsible for the programming.
The NATO Innovation Hub of NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT) launched the challenge in 2017 to create a conceptual platform. The aim was to tackle alliance-wide challenges and set common priorities. Slovenia took part in the organization of the current NATO Innovation Challenge on military mobility.
“The development of our innovation project ‘Yarded’ is an example of how we work at the CIHBw,” explained the head of the CIHBw, Sven Weizenegger. The project originated in the minds of creative soldiers who took part in last year’s Logistics Innovation Challenge. Only a few weeks passed between the initial idea, a coaching phase and the first prototype. The CIHBw partners MVP Factory and VisiTrans GmbH then went on to implement and further test the product with the soldiers. This speed was only possible because Yarded relied on a dual-use product that was available on the market.
