In 2004, the DGA procurement branch of the French MOD started setting up the LTO battlelab that today is operated by the CAD defence analysis centre. The LTO is a collaborative facility allowing the DGA, service personnel and industry to analyse missions performed by the different armed services, exploit operational feedback, update the definition of operational needs, and provide support, in a simulated realistic environment, for the design and modelling of architectures and force systems meeting those needs.

EADS and Thales have also been investing for more than four years in similar battlelab-type facilities—Network Centric Operation Simulation (NetCOS) and Transformation Integration Centre (TIC), respectively—and have built up a set of methods and tools to undertake, for their own purposes, a Concept Development & Evaluation (CD&E) process adapted to support the transformation of defence and security forces.

The design and evaluation of systems of systems that are at the core of force transformation, particularly for net-centric operations, should be among the first to reap the benefits of these state- and industry-owned facilities now brought together in a shared structure called the LANAD (National Defence Laboratory).