NATO is expanding 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 initiative will Task Force X Baltic be formalized through a new letter of intent signed by eight participating allies. According to NATO, the program represents a practical shift from innovation testing to real operational adoption.
“At the 2025 NATO summit, Allied governments agreed on a significant increase in our defense spending to meet a new and ambitious set of defense objectives,” said Nikolaos LoutasDirector of NATO’s Defense Industry, Innovation and Weapons Department, at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
He said 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 for integrating innovation into defense planning, with the aim of meeting what he described as an urgent operational need for new effective technology.
“The Action Plan integrates NATO’s innovation efforts in defense planning and capability development to address the urgent need of our armed forces for innovative and effective technological products,” Loutas said.
He said the allies have committed to measures to accelerate acquisition and integration, including the sharing of best practices, new avenues for adoption and increased experimentation to reduce the risk of new products.
Loutas also pointed to the initiative Task Force X Baltic as one of the practical mechanisms that make this possible. “One 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 shown that the allied navies and armies, through close cooperation with industry, can provide continuous intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from the seabed to space at speed, at scale and in a more accessible way,” Loutas continued.
NATO officials said the second phase will see the eight allies confirm their cooperation in rapidly acquiring multi-domain capabilities enabled by technology for maritime operations. These countries are: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.
With the second phase of Task Force X Baltic now formalized, NATO is positioning the program as a model for wider adoption, with the lessons learned from the Baltic Cable events providing the impetus to incorporate commercial unmanned capabilities into NATO’s overall capabilities.
Photo: NATO / Saildrone. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
