NATO plans to expand the use of unmanned systems to protect the Baltic Sea, the website revealed UK Defence Journal.
According to the report, the next phase of the Task Force X Baltic initiative will be formalized through a new declaration of intent, signed by eight participating allies. According to NATO, the program represents a practical shift from innovation trials to real operational adoption.
“At the 2025 NATO Summit, allied governments approved a significant increase in our defense spending to achieve a new and ambitious set of defense goals,” said Nikolaos LoutasDirector of NATO’s Defense Industry, Innovation and Weapons Department, at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
According to him, they also supported “a rapid adoption action plan to accelerate the pace of technology adoption to achieve these goals.”
The action plan was described as a mechanism to integrate innovation into defense planning, with the aim of solving what he called an urgent operational need for new, effective technologies.
“The action plan integrates NATO’s innovation efforts into defense planning and capability development to meet our armed forces’ urgent need for innovative and effective technological products,” Loutas said.
He said the allies had committed to actions aimed at accelerating acquisition and integration, including sharing best practices, new adoption paths and increased experimentation to reduce the risks of new products.
Loutas also pointed out the initiative Task Force X Baltic as one of the practical mechanisms that make this possible. “A measure in this direction is the structure of Task Force X Balticwhich today reaches a very important second milestone, with the signing of a Letter of Intent for the second phase of Task Force X Baltic.”
“The first phase of Task Force X Baltic has demonstrated that, by working closely with industry, allied navies and land forces are able to provide continuous intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from the seabed to space, at speed, at scale and in a more affordable manner,” Loutas further said.
NATO officials indicated that the second phase will see eight allies reaffirm their cooperation in the rapid acquisition of multi-domain capabilities enabled by maritime operations technology. These countries are: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.
Now the second phase of Task Force X Baltic is formalized, NATO is positioning the program as a model for broader adoption, with lessons from the Baltic cables incidents increasing pressure to include unmanned commercial capabilities into NATO’s capabilities.
Photos: NATO / Saildrone. This content was created using AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
