The NSOV is added to the NAF to support building architectures based on the concept of a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which is fundamental to the NNEC paradigm. The NSOV is a description of services needed to directly support the operational domain as described in the NATO Operational View. A service, within the NSOV, is understood in its broadest sense, as a unit of work through which a provider provides a useful result to a consumer. NSOV focuses strictly on identifying and describing services. The view also supports the description of service taxonomies, service orchestrations, a mapping of services to operational activities, and a description of various forms of service behaviour.

The views of this viewpoint are described in the following sections: