The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Architectural Framework (NAF) is designed for developing architectures that provide a means to model, understand, analyze and specify Capabilities, Resources, Systems, Systems of Systems (SoS), Services, Acquisitions, and Business Processes. NAF can be applied across a wide variety of processes including capability management, acquisition, operational analysis, planning and through-life management.

Several NAF versions are supported: NAF v4, NAF v3, and NAF v1.

To support the NAF modeling, you must customize a new or existing project encyclopedia by configuring the encyclopedia properties.

For more information, see Configuring encyclopedias for NAF.

NAF v4 specifies that NAF-compliant architectures can be creating using the following meta-models:

In System Architect, NAF 4 is provided using the UAF underlying metamodel, which is itself based on the DoDAF 2.02 DDM – the DM2, with additions to incorporate metamodel concepts of NAF 3, MODAF 1.2, and the Canadian DNDAF 1.7.

For more information, see NAF v4.

NAF 3 was developed from the US Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DoDAF) and Ministry of Defense Architectural Framework (MODAF). NAF 3 maintains compatibility with the core DoDAF and MODAF viewpoints in order to facilitate exchange of architectural information, for example in conducting international interoperability analyses.

For more information, see NAF v3.

NAF 1.0 was developed from the US Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DoDAF). NAF 1.0 keeps compatibility with the core DoDAF viewpoints in order to facilitate exchange of architectural information with the US, for example in conducting international interoperability analyses.

For more information, see NAF v1.