We present research on a federated, adaptive tactical cloud for coalition operations at the edge. It decentralizes compute across partners so each nation retains sovereignty over data and resources. An orchestration layer senses network and node health and redistributes services, flows, and workloads in real time to withstand low bandwidth, intermittent links, and node loss. The outcome is resilient mission effects, faster fielding, and efficient use of scarce edge resources across heterogeneous platforms.

Within NATO IST-193—with Fraunhofer FKIE among the contributors—we designed, built, and validated this approach. We prototyped services for a federated adaptive edge cloud, ran demonstrators in collaborative vehicle tracking and urban sensor fusion, and conducted ...