Do the FUSION / NATO-RTO information-fusion papers named by ONERA (2012) actually cite STANAG directly, when read in the original rather than through ONERA's characterization?
claim-information-fusion-cites-stanag-by-number-inherited-not-convergent establishes, from a direct Tier-1 read of Besombes, Cholvy & Dragos (ONERA, 2012), two things. The core is verified: that paper cites NATO STANAG 2511 by number in its own reference list. The breadth is not: the claim that a named cluster of six-plus other FUSION / NATO-RTO papers also invoke STANAG rests entirely on the ONERA authors' own characterization of those papers — "All of these papers mention NATO STANAG as underlying or motivating their model" — not on an independent read of each.
The verification needed. Read the named cluster papers directly and confirm (or complicate) that each cites STANAG 2511 or STANAG 2022 as the ONERA authors say. In priority order, the most load-bearing and the closest to a primary record of how the fusion community first engaged the doctrine:
- Cholvy & Nimier (2003), NATO RTO IST Symposium, "Information Evaluation: discussion about STANAG 2022 Recommendations" — the earliest item in the cluster.
- Besombes & Révault d'Allonnes (2008), FUSION 2008, "An Extension of STANAG2022 for Information Scoring" — also on HAL at hal-00600722.
- Ulicny, Matheus, Powell & Kokar (2010), FUSION 2010, and its 2011 CogSIMA follow-up (Ulicny, Powell, Brown, Kokar, Matheus & Letkowski).
Access notes (from the capture, so a future session doesn't re-run them). The capture did not obtain full text for any of these. HAL's page for the 2008 paper was bot-walled (Anubis challenge) to this vault's tooling; a university-library or IEEE Xplore route might get through. For the Ulicny 2010 paper specifically, apps.dtic.mil returned 403 and ece.northeastern.edu failed DNS resolution in that environment. Seek has no library route for subscription-only venues at present (Cali, 2026-10-01).
Why it matters. If the cluster confirms, the "decade-long, multi-author citation lineage" framing in the claim-note is corroborated at primary and the note can move off its secondhand-characterization caveat. If any named paper turns out not to cite STANAG — or to cite it differently than ONERA implies — that is itself a finding about how a field's self-description of its own ancestry can outrun the record. Either outcome bears on observation-nato-source-grading-lineage-reaches-two-fields-but-stops-before-rag and the two-axes cluster.
Progress 2026-10-31 (partial — question stays open). The 2026-10-26 capture (10-inbox/raw/2026-10-26-do-the-fusion-nato-rto-information-fusion-papers.md, promoted 2026-10-31) chased the three priority papers and settled two of them by direct read:
- Priority 2 — Besombes & Révault d'Allonnes (2008): CONFIRMED. Read in full via HAL deposit hal-00600722. Cites STANAG 2022 (Edition 8) directly in abstract, in a section titled "STANAG2022," and in reference [1] by edition and year. → claim-besombes-revault-dallonnes-2008-extends-stanag-2022-by-name.
- Priority 3 — Ulicny, Matheus, Powell & Kokar (2010): CONFIRMED. Read in full from Kokar's Northeastern mirror (apps.dtic.mil 403'd). Cites "[15] STANAG 2022 (Edition 8) Annex" directly, reproduces the A–F / 1–6 tables, and critiques the doctrine across two sections. → claim-ulicny-matheus-powell-kokar-2010-cites-and-critiques-stanag-2022.
- Priority 1 — Cholvy & Nimier (2003): STILL DARK. The earliest and most load-bearing item was not obtained as full text after a genuine multi-route search. New dead ends recorded here so a future session does not re-walk them: DTIC-hosted PDF (apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA428653.pdf) 403'd (a known-blocked route per sources.md); a Wayback capture of that DTIC URL 404'd (no snapshot); NATO STO's own publications page for RTO-MP-IST-040 404'd on two path guesses; no HAL deposit by either author under the title; ResearchGate and academia.edu surfaced only bibliographic listings. The title and attribution are corroborated bibliographically (a hal-univ-paris8 citing-paper reference list), but that is a citation record, not the document. No library route exists for subscription venues (Cali, 2026-10-01), so this stays a manual-consultation item.
Ruling: PARTIAL, question stays OPEN. Two of three priority papers now independently confirm ONERA's characterization — the breadth claim in claim-information-fusion-cites-stanag-by-number-inherited-not-convergent is strengthened, not yet fully discharged. The oldest link in the lineage (Cholvy & Nimier 2003) remains checked only by ONERA's secondhand description. The parent note's watch_flag stays until the 2003 paper (and ideally the Young & Palmer 2007 and Besombes & Cholvy 2007 items) are read directly. The 2011 CogSIMA follow-up and the further-leads papers (Rogova & Nimier 2004, Nimier 2004, Capet 2013) were not read this session and remain next-check candidates.