This paper deals with essential principles of
Interoperability, Agility, Collaboration and Knowledge
applied in the context of Network Enabled Capability
Through Innovative Systems Engineering (NECTISE).
Using empirical investigations these concepts have been
identified as NEC-readiness themes and they contribute
significantly to the realisation of NEC. Based on a
systemic analysis and application of theoretical
principles, the approach described in this paper
contributes towards the demonstration of NEC as well as
the identification of a limited set of critical features for
capability planning and systems design. Some research
questions are derived and discussed and a gap analysis
strategy is proposed. These themes also defined as critical
features have been investigated in a variety of contexts
The main contributions of this paper are related to the
mapping the themes to the military capability model and
formalisation of the relationships. The purpose of such an
exercise is to exploit learning from other (mainly civil) domains in the military context, with regard to the
readiness themes which overlap with a limited set of
critical features for design within a NEC context
