Alliance members agreed at the 31st annual summit, held June 14 in Brussels, to launch a new initiative dubbed the Defence Innovation Accelerator of the North Atlantic, or DIANA, meant to speed up trans-Atlantic cooperation on critical technologies, and help NATO work more closely with private-sector entities, academia and other non-governmental entities.

The goal is to have DIANA reach initial operating capability (IOC) by 2023, David van Weel, assistant secretary-general for emerging security challenges, said at a Tuesday virtual roundtable with reporters. By next year, the hope is to have “the initial parts … starting to come up into fruition,” he added.

In the long term, DIANA will have headquarters both in North America and in Europe, and link to existing test centers throughout NATO member countries that will be used for “validating, testing, and co-designing applications in the field of emerging and disruptive technologies,” van Weel said. DIANA will also be responsible for building and managing a network meant to help relevant startups grow and support NATO’s technology needs via grant programs.

The focus will be on national security and defense purposes, and DIANA will not ask for or solicit companies’ intellectual property, van Weel noted.

While he singled out artificial intelligence, big-data processing, and quantum-enabled technologies, DIANA is meant to support all seven of the key emerging and disruptive technologies — or EDTs — that NATO has identified as critical for the future. The other four include: autonomy, biotechnology, hypersonics and space.

Sometimes a technology company may not realize that their product could be viable for the defense community, he added.

One key component of DIANA will be a trusted capital marketplace, where smaller companies can connect with pre-qualified investors who are interested in supporting NATO’s technology efforts. Ensuring that investors are vetted ahead of time will allow NATO to ensure “that the technology will be protected from illicit transfers,” van Weel said.

The fund is modeled after a The U.S. Defense Department set up its own trusted capital marketplace in 2019 as a tool that then-DoD acquisition czar Ellen Lord said could help encourage domestically based venture capitalists to fund national security and defense projects. That marketplace served as inspiration for the announced NATO trusted capital marketplace, per the alliance.

Members also agreed for the first time to build up a venture capital fund to support companies developing dual-use and key technologies that could be useful to NATO, and which will be optional for member-nations to participate in. The NATO Innovation Fund, as it’s called, would have a running time of about 15 years to start, and would be underwritten by about 70 million euro (about $83 million) per year, per van Weel.

The goal is not for NATO headquarters or for its member-nations to run the innovation fund, he noted. “The actual running of a venture capital fund, we believe, should be done by companies that have a broad range of experience in the field.” He cited the U.S.-based capital venture firm In-Q-Tel as an example of the type of partner NATO would seek to run the “day-to-day” business of the fund.

“I read somewhere that NATO is not a bank—we’re not,” van Weel said. “But it will be the nations providing the funds, and giving the general direction.”

These two initiatives of a technology accelerator and innovation fund are “hopefully going to … bring the alliance forward into the 21st century,” van Weel said.

NATO has previously invested in information technology (IT) and software through the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA), but the difference with the innovation fund, and DIANA, is that the alliance wants to better connect with early-stage startups, rather than larger software companies or traditional defense firms, van Weel said.

“DIANA is not about taking over innovation for the NATO enterprise,” he said. “It’s a different community, and requires different funding mechanisms and different types of engagement.”

These two initiatives have been long awaited and demanded by NATO observers, and versions of both a “DARPA-like” technology accelerator and an alliance-wide investment bank were included in a 2020 list of recommendations by NATO’s advisory group on emerging and disruptive technologies.

But it is still early days. While the IOC goal is 2023, “step one is we want to know from allies what they want to offer to DIANA,” van Weel said. Once the NATO Innovation Fund has its participating members, for example, a charter will be set up that will lay out the funding models, rapid contracting processes, and leadership guidelines.

“We are trying to do this as fast as we can,” van Weel assured, but then noted, “we do want to get it right, because … with the startup community, you only get one chance.”

This program, part of a series of cybersecurity technology refresh efforts being run by the NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA), will start in early 2022 and be worth about 27 million euros (or $32 million).

NCIA is looking to upgrade its firewalls, penetration testing tools, and other cyber defense capabilities through this effort. Rebecca Benson, NCIA’s principal contracting officer, described it as “one of the most diverse and complex” of all of the cyber technology refresh programs, which are grouped together under what is called the Capability Package (CP) 120 program.

“The main reason being … that it has multiple cybersecurity systems that we’re going to be refreshing,” Benson said June 16 during the virtually held, annual NITEC Connect conference. “Whatever you name, we have it in there.”

The ideal industry partner would be an integrator with significant experience in design, and in implementing multiple, complex cybersecurity systems across multiple locations, she noted. “They have to be deployable, because we’re talking about the NATO enterprise, not just SHAPE,” Benson said, referring to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, the alliance’s headquarters for allied command operations located in Belgium. “It would be in [the team’s] benefit if they like to travel.”

Per NCIA’s notice of intent to solicit for this cyber security system refresh, the organization will issue a request for quotes (RFQ) by the third quarter of 2021. A single, firm-fixed-price contract is expected.

Meanwhile, NCIA recently completed a new cybersecurity strategy that seeks to establish trust in NATO’s cyber defense capabilities across the alliance, said Sarah Brown, senior scientist at the agency.

The strategy, which has yet to be formalized, includes directives on workforce management and risk management planning, along with providing instructions for security operations and engineering work.

“We want to be seen as a professional service provider, a center of technical excellence, with open communication, and reporting,” Brown said. “From an organizational perspective, that means we need to have clear roles and responsibilities across the different cybersecurity areas, and also a highly skilled workforce, from the staff level all the way to the executive level, in order to deliver on our level of ambition.”

The COVID-19 pandemic hastened NATO’s internal digital transformation, leaders said at the virtual conference. In 2020, classified video conferences increased across the alliance by six-fold, while restricted and non-classified video conferencing increased 20-fold, compared to 2019, said NCIA General Manager Kevin Scheid. Meanwhile, military exercises were conducted virtually, and NATO members had to learn quickly how to continue to operate in a largely virtual, now becoming more hybrid, environment.

“Organizational and cultural change is difficult and often takes a crisis to make it happen,” Scheid said. “The pandemic has forced the alliance to rethink the nature of diplomatic engagements.”

Stoltenberg’s remarks came a day after President Joe Biden refused to give a “yes” or “no” to Ukraine joining NATO while at the alliance’s annual summit in Brussels on Monday. Biden did say during a press conference that the U.S. and other NATO allies affirmed support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“Ukraine is an aspirant country,” Stoltenberg told the Washington-based Defense Writers Group on Tuesday. “We provide support to them, especially to continue to modernize and refine their defense and security institutions, civilian-political control over their security services, and not least fighting corruption.”

He added: “We have different building-integrity programs, which are very much about how to fight corruption as part of the reforms … which Ukraine has already embarked on, but we need more. We need to do more with them to make sure they are fully implemented.”

“To agree on the membership action plan, you need consensus among 30 allies. This was not the focus of this summit,” Stoltenberg said.

On Monday, the summit ended with the release of a joint communique that reaffirmed NATO’s 2008 decision for Ukraine to become a member through a membership action plan, or MAP ― though there’s no timetable mentioned. Meanwhile, Kyiv is working to adopt NATO-mandated reforms both to strengthen it against Russian interference and move it towards membership.

Ahead of a summit between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Geneva on Wednesday, Kyiv has appeared eager to interpret its interactions with Biden and NATO in its favor.

In its initial readout of a call between Zelenskyy and Biden, Zelenskyy’s office claimed Biden emphasized the importance of offering Ukraine a specific roadmap for joining NATO. But it then changed that version to clarify it was Zelenskyy who pushed for providing Ukraine with a membership action plan; it said Biden promised that Kyiv’s position will be taken into account when discussing strategic issues within NATO.

“Commend @NATO partners’ understanding of all the risks and challenges we face,” Zelenskyy said in a tweet. “NATO leaders confirmed that [Ukraine] will become a member of the Alliance & the #MAP is an integral part of the membership process. [Ukraine] deserves due appreciation of its role in ensuring Euro-Atlantic security.”

When Biden was asked Monday whether NATO had allowed Ukraine to join, he said it would depend on Ukraine’s anti-corruption activities and its implementation of NATO’s criteria to get to the membership action plan.

“And so it’s, you know, school’s out on that question. It remains to be seen,” Biden said, adding: “It will not just depend on me whether or not we conclude that Ukraine can become part of NATO. It will depend on the alliance and how they vote.”

Meanwhile, Biden said, the U.S. would “do all that we can to put Ukraine in the position to be able to continue to resist Russian physical aggression.”

Ukraine has been locked in a tense tug-of-war with Russia ever since the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly president in 2014 and a Russia-backed separatist insurgency in the country’s east — a conflict that has killed more than 14,000.

In an interview on Russian state television, Putin issued a strong, new warning that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was unacceptable for Russia. He noted it would allow the alliance’s missiles to reach Moscow and other key targets in western Russia in only seven minutes, a destabilizing situation that he said was comparable to Russia putting its missiles in Mexico or Canada.

Last week, the Pentagon announced a previously teased $150 million security aid package to Ukraine, which included counter-artillery radars, counter-unmanned aerial systems, secure communications gear, electronic warfare and military medical evacuation equipment.

The $125 million package announced in March included armed Mark VI patrol boats, counter-artillery radars, tactical equipment, support for a satellite imagery and analysis capability, and equipment to support military medical treatment and combat evacuation procedures.

Pentagon officials also highlighted steps Kyiv has made on reforms ― including its passage of a defense procurement corruption law ― as well as five more things it must do to conform to Western standards.

“The United States is committed to assisting Ukraine with the implementation of these reforms, and we maintain a robust advisory effort to help modernize Ukraine’s military in line with NATO principles and standards,” said the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, Laura Cooper.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

In a summit statement, the leaders said that China’s goals and “assertive behavior present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to alliance security.”

While the 30 heads of state and government avoided calling China a rival, they expressed concern about what they said were its “coercive policies,” the opaque ways it is modernizing its armed forces and its use of disinformation.

They called on Beijing to uphold its international commitments and to act responsibly in the international system.

The statement comes as President Joe Biden has stepped up his effort to rally allies to speak in a more unified voice about China’s human rights record, its trade practices and its military’s increasingly assertive behavior that has unnerved U.S. allies in the Pacific.

Biden, who arrived at the summit after three days of consulting with Group of Seven allies in England, pushed for the G-7 communique there that called out what it said were forced labor practices and other human rights violations impacting Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in the western Xinjiang province. The president said he was satisfied with the communique, although differences remain among the allies about how forcefully to criticize Beijing.

The new Brussels communique states plainly that the NATO nations “will engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the alliance.””

The Chinese Embassy to the United Kingdom on Monday issued a statement saying the G-7 communique “deliberately slandered China and arbitrarily interfered in China’s internal affairs,” and exposed the “sinister intentions of a few countries, such as the United States.” There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese government to the new NATO statement.

Biden arrived at his first NATO summit as president as leading members declared it a pivotal moment for an alliance beleaguered during the presidency of Donald Trump, who questioned the relevance of the multilateral organization.

Shortly after arriving at the alliance’s headquarters for the first NATO summit of his presidency, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and underscored the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the alliance charter, which spells out that an attack on one member is an attack on all and is to be met with a collective response.

“Article 5 we take as a sacred obligation,” Biden said. “I want NATO to know America is there.”

It was a sharp shift in tone from the past four years, when Trump called the alliance “obsolete” and complained that it allowed for “global freeloading” countries to spend less on military defense at the expense of the U.S.

Looking forward, Stoltenberg noted myriad challenges still facing the alliance.

“We are meeting at the pivotal time for our alliance, the time of growing geopolitical competition, regional instability, terrorism, cyber attacks and climate change,” Stoltenberg said at the start of a joint session of the NATO leaders. “No nation and no continent can deal with these challenges alone. But Europe and North America are not alone.”

Biden, who came to Brussels following three days of consultations with Group of Seven leaders in England, was greeted by fellow leaders with warmth and even a bit of relief.

Belgium Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said Biden’s presence “emphasizes the renewal of the transatlantic partnership.” De Croo said NATO allies were looking to get beyond four stormy years under the Trump administration and infighting among member countries.

“I think now we are ready to turn the page,” de Croo said.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi made a not-so-subtle dig at Trump, while welcoming Biden.

“This summit is a continuation of yesterday’s G-7 and is part of the process of reaffirming, of rebuilding the fundamental alliances of the United States that had been weakened by the previous administration,” he said. “Think that President Biden’s first visit is to Europe and try to remember where President Trump’s first visit was?”

Trump’s first overseas visit as president was to Saudi Arabia.

Trump routinely berated other NATO countries for not spending enough on defense and even threatened to pull the U.S. out of the world’s biggest security organization and even questioned the mutual defense provision of the NATO charter, a central tenet of the alliance.

When alliance members last met for a summit in England in December 2019, Trump grabbed headlines by calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “two-faced” and French President Emmanuel Macron “nasty.”

Trump lashed out after Trudeau was caught on a hot mic gossiping with other leaders about Trump turning photo opportunities into long news conferences. Ahead of the summit, Macron had declared NATO “brain dead” because of a void in U.S. leadership under Trump.

The White House said the communique to be signed by alliance members at the end of the NATO summit is expected to include language about updating Article 5 to include major cyber attacks — a matter of growing concern amid a series of hacks targeting the U.S. government and businesses around the globe by Russia-based hackers.

The update will spell out that if an alliance member needs technical or intelligence support in response to a cyber attack, it would be able to invoke the mutual defense provision to receive assistance, according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

The president started his day meeting with leaders of the Baltic states on NATO’s eastern flank as well as separate meetings with leaders of Poland and Romania to discuss the threat posed by Russia and the recent air piracy in Belarus, according to the White House.

Biden’s itinerary in Europe has been shaped so that he would first gather with G-7 leaders and then with NATO allies in Brussels before his much-anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday. And with both summits, Biden aimed to consult European allies on efforts to counter provocative actions by China and Russia.

Biden will meet later on Monday with Turkey’s president, Erdogan, on the summit sidelines.

Biden has known Erdogan for years but their relationship has frequently been contentious. Biden, during his campaign, drew ire from Turkish officials after he described Erdogan as an “autocrat.” In April, Biden infuriated Ankara by declaring that the Ottoman-era mass killing and deportations of Armenians was “genocide” — a term that U.S. presidents have avoided using.

Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty states that an attack on any one of the 30 allies will be considered an attack on them all. Until now, it’s only applied to more traditional military attacks on land, sea, or in the air, and more recently in cyberspace.

In a summit statement, the leaders said they “consider that attacks to, from, or within space” could be a challenge to NATO that threatens “national and Euro-Atlantic prosperity, security, and stability, and could be as harmful to modern societies as a conventional attack.”

“Such attacks could lead to the invocation of Article 5. A decision as to when such attacks would lead to the invocation of Article 5 would be taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-by-case basis,” they said.

Around 2,000 satellites orbit the earth, over half operated by NATO countries, ensuring everything from mobile phone and banking services to weather forecasts. Military commanders rely on some of them to navigate, communicate, share intelligence and detect missile launches.

In December 2019, NATO leaders declared space to be the alliance’s “fifth domain” of operations, after land, sea, air and cyberspace. Many member countries are concerned about what they say is increasingly aggressive behavior in space by China and Russia.

Around 80 countries have satellites, and private companies are moving in, too. In the 1980s, just a fraction of NATO’s communications was via satellite. Today, it’s at least 40%. During the Cold War, NATO had more than 20 stations, but new technologies mean the world’s biggest security organization can double its coverage with a fifth of that number.

NATO’s collective defense clause has only been activated once, when the members rallied behind the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Former President Donald Trump raised deep concern among U.S. allies, notably those bordering Russia like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, when he suggested that he might not rally to their side if they didn’t boost their defense budgets.

President Joe Biden has been trying to reassure them since taking office and has used the summit, his first at NATO, as a formal opportunity to underline America’s commitment to its European allies and Canada.

Biden said Monday that Article 5 is “a sacred obligation” among allies. “I just want all of Europe to know that the United States is there,” he said. “The United States is there.”

Multiple allies want to add a new medium-lift, multirole helicopter to their fleets, and are launching a joint effort to develop a common set of requirements as well as hash out a timeline to design, develop and field a new platform around 2035.

Over the next year, observers will monitor whether the allies that eventually sign onto the program will push for a European-developed rotorcraft — or buy American.

Last fall, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and Greece signed letters of intent to work together on requirements for the Next-Generation Rotorcraft Capability, or NGRC. Since then, several other allies have signaled interest in joining the program, ahead of an expected signing ceremony for a memorandum of understanding in 2022.

While the effort is still in the drawing-board phase, the alliance will host an industry day for the NGRC program in mid-September, at the NATO Support and Procurement Agency headquarters in Luxembourg. Per the industry day documents, the event is intended solely as a means to gather information, rather than solicit bids, but the agency has already outlined several required attributes.

The team imagines the NGRC as an optionally unmanned and remotely piloted vehicle, with a modular, open-systems approach, which allows for seamless and cost-efficient digital upgrades.

The aircraft must have an unrefueled range of more than 1,650 kilometers, with a target of eight hours endurance and the ability to achieve various missions, including deck landings, special operations, search-and-rescue, and medical evacuation. The helicopter should be capable of carrying between 10,000 and 17,000 kilograms (22,000 and 37,400 pounds, respectively).

The goal is also to develop a common airframe for both land, air and maritime variants, although the agency allows for the possibility of separate platforms if a common airframe proves too contentious.

While NATO said development costs will be released at a later date, the industry day documents noted an ideal fly-away cost of no greater than €35 million (U.S. $43 million) and a cost-per-flight-hour of about €5,000, but no greater than €10,000.

The extent of NATO members participating in the program remains to be seen. Besides the five nations who have already signed a letter of intent to participate in late 2020, the Netherlands and Spain have also expressed interest in joining the NGRC program, a NATO official told Defense News.

The industry day background document also noted that the United States is interested in joining the program amid its own development program for a new multirole medium-lift helicopter.

The U.S. Army is close to launching a formal program to build the future long-range assault aircraft, or FLRAA, after awarding risk-reduction phase contracts in March to a Boeing-Sikorsky team and to Bell. The service intends to select a winner in 2022 at the start of the official program, with plans to field the aircraft by 2035.

“The United States is closely associated with the NGRC effort, to ensure maximum compatibility between NGRC and the FLRAA” programs, the NATO official said. No further letters of intent or other documents have emerged since the original letters were signed in October 2020, the official added.

Should the United States sign on as a formal partner, it will likely look to use the NGRC as another sale for the eventual FLRAA aircraft, observers said. While the two efforts are, so far, independent of each other, they seek to fill the same requirement, said Ray Jaworowski, a senior analyst at Forecast International, a U.S.-based market intelligence firm.

“It’s an interesting situation because you have two programs [with] very similar time frames, essentially looking at almost the exact same requirement: a utility helicopter in the Black Hawk or NH90 class,” he said.

Whichever design wins the FLRAA contract will be a leading contender for the NATO program, Jaworowski said. But the nations that have already signed onto NGRC will undoubtedly push for their hometown industries to play significant roles in the effort.

France and Germany will likely vie for Airbus to lead any new helicopter development, while Leonardo would be the favorite for Italy and the United Kingdom, said Dan Darling, a senior analyst at Forecast International. Turf wars between the allies’ domestic industrial priorities are expected, and the question on analysts’ minds is whether local industry concerns will trump the alliance’s ambition to ensure commonality and economies of scale, Darling noted.

European nations are “trying to reconstitute an atrophying domestic defense-industrial base,” he said. “COVID-19 drove home to a lot of these governments that you can no longer offshore work and supply chains, and outsource your military procurement.”

Airbus is pushing strongly for a European-built system, an industry source told Defense News. Leonardo has also advocated for that option, but also indicated it wants to participate in the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift program, Jaworowski noted. FVL is the service’s major overhaul of its rotorcraft fleet and includes the FLRAA effort along with four other aircraft designs of varying sizes.

The list of participating countries is not yet set in stone, and analysts see scenarios where nations such as the United Kingdom and Italy break off, choosing to develop a Leonardo-based design or procure the FLRAA aircraft, while Germany, France and perhaps Spain go with an Airbus option. “Or you can see Airbus and Leonardo get together for a European design, which would certainly be the favorite for the NATO program, considering industrial concerns,” Jaworowski said.

If the FLRAA design were ultimately selected, observers can expect some sort of requirement for considerable European industrial participation such as a final assembly facility included in the contract, he added. And if the American design is not selected, he added, having the United States participate in the NGRC program in some capacity could help ensure interoperability between the two eventual systems.

The outcome of the NGRC program could set up the eventual contractor for long-term sales. A Fortune Business Insights report published in August 2020 predicts the global helicopter market size will exceed $68 billion by 2027, up from $48 billion in 2019. While military helicopters only took up one-third of overall sales in 2019, the report’s authors see opportunities ahead, as nations around the world are boosting their defense budgets amid rising transnational disputes and efforts to modernize capabilities.

The marquee element of this year’s summit, taking place June 14, is the NATO 2030 agenda, which includes recommendations to strengthen the alliance’s roles and ability to tackle current and future threats. One such proposal is to invest more holistically and strategically in emerging and disruptive technologies, and seven in particular were identified as key areas of focus in NATO’s ”Science & Technology Trends 2020-2040″ report.

Space is one of those technologies, but in the lead-up to the Brussels summit, it barely merited a mention from alliance leaders, who are prioritizing new strategies related to artificial intelligence and data computing.

In a June 5 virtual pre-summit appearance at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s sole nod was a simple statement: “Since 2014, we have implemented the largest reinforcement of our collective defense in a generation, enhancing our ability to defend all allies, on land, at sea, in the air, in cyberspace and in space.”

Stoltenberg tends to be careful when noting NATO’s approach to space will remain defensive and focused on early-warning, communications and navigation capabilities. “NATO has no intention to put weapons in space, but we need to ensure our missions and operations have the right support,” he said in 2019.

This tone differs from the rhetoric of U.S. military and government leaders, who have called space a “war-fighting domain.” This juxtaposition leaves observers wondering what NATO’s role will be in the space domain moving forward.

Sovereign activity

There are opportunities for NATO’s headquarters to serve as a “single point of contact,” coordinating its members’ space efforts, said Nicholas Nelson, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. That’s because several members are individually investing more funds than ever into space.

The U.S. Defense Department created the Space Force as the newest American military branch in December 2019, along with several new agencies meant to better prioritize the space domain. The department’s fiscal 2022 budget request, released in May, included more than $17 billion for the Space Force, about $2.2 billion more than Congress appropriated for the service in the previous fiscal year.

If approved, Space Force funding would take up about 2.5 percent of the total FY22 Pentagon budget. Funding for both space-related procurement as well as research and development would grow in 2022: procurement dollars would rise from $2.3 billion in 2021 to $2.8 billion in 2022; and R&D funds would grow from $10.5 billion in 2021 to $11.3 billion in 2022, per budget documents.

Across the pond, the United Kingdom is expected to spend about £7 billion (U.S. $10 billion) on its space portfolio over the next 10 years. In April, it stood up the new U.K. Space Command as a joint command staffed by Navy, Army and Air Force personnel as well as members of the nation’s civil service. The 2021 budget for Space Command is expected to be about £51.8 million, according to a Defence Ministry spokesperson.

In 2019, the French Armed Forces Ministry created its own, separate Space Force Command — known in French as “la Commandement de L’espace.” The ministry announced plans to invest €700 million (U.S. $852 million) in the new unit through 2025. That’s on top of the €3.6 billion France committed to spend on the military space domain as part of the 2019-2025 Military Program Law.

Observers are also watching how other NATO allies may step forward in the space domain. Germany, for example, is a country where “despite making all the right noises, there is still a reticence to actually describe space as a war-fighting domain,” Nelson said.

What’s NATO’s role among the stars?

But not all nations must set up their own satellite programs or build launch capabilities, nor are all capable of doing so. NATO could help identify areas in the value chain for various nations to participate, Nelson noted.

NATO headquarters could also help set the tone for space-based nomenclature and definitions across the alliance, he added, which would ensure all members “are reading from the same sheet of music” and would streamline programs and processes.

“Different countries define different parts of the space value chain, using a similar but different language that means different things. If no one is speaking the same language, so to speak, it’s really tough to get a baseline of understanding,” Nelson said.

The discussion surrounding the space domain has changed drastically over the past two to three decades, according to Xavier Pasco, director of the French think tank Foundation for Strategic Research, who spoke during a recent hearing before the French Senate’s foreign affairs and defense committee. He noted that nations — particularly, but not exclusively, the United States — have started to speak of space as an “infrastructure” or a “commodity” that will serve the wider global economy. That change in rhetoric will inevitably elicit a shift in government approaches and decision-making, he added.

NATO has made strides in honing its focus on space. In 2019, the alliance agreed to found the NATO Space Centre, based at the alliance’s Allied Air Command at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, with the goal of supporting space domain awareness activities through the coordination of data, products and services among members.

But more can and must be done at a coalition level to ensure allies keep pace with the massive investments made by peer adversaries like Russia and China, although the alliance is not yet fully aligned on its policies toward the latter, Nelson said.

“You can’t afford in this era of great power competition to have … mass duplication” of capabilities or assets, he explained.

Interoperability, a key goal of NATO in every operational domain, will also suffer in space if the alliance does not develop a common set of priorities and efforts, Nelson predicted, noting that multiple space-based capabilities are coming online within the alliance’s community, such as the U.S.-based next-generation GPS III satellite system and the European Space Agency’s Galileo platforms.

“If you’re not building interoperability from both a strategy, policy and obviously technological standpoint, we’re not going to be able to fight together as an alliance in a meaningful way,” Nelson said. “It’s going to leave massive gaps in our ability to achieve one of NATO’s core aims, which is collective defense.”

The summit will mark one of the first major in-person defense events after the global coronavirus pandemic began showing signs of ebbing. It will also be the first such gathering with U.S. President Joe Biden, whose predecessor had NATO officials worrying more about keeping the alliance together than composing a forward-looking agenda.

Deterrence is expected to be one of the major themes, as member states in Europe look to craft a message to Russia that NATO’s eastern flank is off limits to what they see as Moscow’s military adventurism.

To that end, leaders at the summit will consider how best to implement a key document, the classified Concept for Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area, or DDA for short, drawn up by military planners. The plan is part of the core canon of NATO doctrine, tying together national strategies and modernization programs.

NATO’s easternmost members have shown a particular interest in seeing the concept put into practice through military heft. Russian forces are gearing up for the large-scale Zapad exercise this summer, which has former Soviet Union countries that are now part of the Western alliance on edge.

“From Estonia’s perspective, it’s important that the DDA will form the backbone of the alliance’s modernized deterrence and defense posture, providing the strategic framework necessary to deter and defend against all threats and ensure rapid and timely reinforcement of any ally,” Estonian Defence Minister Kalle Laanet told Defense News.

One idea pitched by the Baltic countries in recent years, expected to resurface at the summit, entails expanding the alliance’s air-policing mission on the northeastern flank into a broader air defense mission, including anti-missile weapons.

Strategic homework

The summit is also expected to formally order the production of a new NATO strategic concept, to conclude within a year. That work amounts to a wholesale revision of alliance guidance, to which member nations align their national defense plans. The most recent concept hails from 2010, predating Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine that changed the strategic calculus for European governments.

“The new strategic concept would be a milestone, as so many issues regarding threats and deterrence flow from it,” said German lawmaker Tobias Lindner, the Green Party’s point man for defense issues in the Bundestag.

The topic of deterrence — nuclear, that is — is expected to make a reprise in Germany following the federal election in late September, where the Greens have a shot at joining the next governing coalition, according to recent polls.

Whenever major defense questions come up in the country, Germany’s continued participation in NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement — meaning German Tornado aircraft carrying U.S. atomic bombs into a hypothetical war – ends up on the table.

While the Greens are known to reject nuclear weapons, their exact stance would probably be finalized only during actual coalition negotiations, Lindner told Defense News.

He predicted the party’s position will end up something like this: The Greens want Germany to get out of the nuclear weapons business, and by extension discuss the Tornado replacement strategy, but not in a way that would be disruptive to Berlin’s defense commitments.

China challenge

NATO leaders are also expected to advance the alliance’s thinking on China, a country where perceptions in Europe and the United States perhaps diverge the most. NATO’s 2019 London Declaration only refers to China as having “growing influence and international policies” that present “both opportunities and challenges.”

Beijing’s combination of economic, diplomatic and military means to pursue its global agenda has at times flummoxed Western analysts trained to think in the currency of hard power or, at best, hybrid conflicts.

One of the alliance’s strategies for keeping Chinese expansionist ambitions in check is to deepen relations with partner nations in the Asia-Pacific region. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg previously referred to the approach as flexing the alliance’s political muscle in the region while keeping the geographic center of gravity in the Euro-Atlantic area.

“We share the values of many of those Asia-Pacific partners, and we are a values-based military alliance,” Air Chief Marshal Stuart Peach, the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said in an interview with Defense News. “Therefore, working with them in this world, which is, let’s say, disturbed, seems to make sense to us. It can take many forms: partnership on missions, partnership on exercises, mutual maritime support, working together on cyber resilience.”

Peach expects the summit to provide new guidance on “the general direction of travel” when it comes to implementation.

“There isn’t a defined, finite list of activities,” he said. “Some of it will depend on their ambition and on our ambition. Whatever political direction we’re given at the summit, we can match that with military partnership.”

In Europe, there has been something of a newfound interest in proving that countries can muster lengthy naval deployments to the region. The French military, for example, sailed its nuclear-powered submarine Emeraude through the South China Sea this year. Germany is expected to send a frigate this summer, though military leaders and diplomats in Berlin have reportedly been at odds over how overtly they want the trip to serve as a freedom-of-navigation operation in an area where multiple countries, including China, are butting heads over disputed territories.

Perhaps most visibly, a U.K. carrier strike group, with the new aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth as the flagship, set sail toward the region on May 22. The trip is shaping up be something of a floating exercise platform for the kinds of ties that NATO wants to promote.

The China conundrum also manifests closer to home. Earlier this year, German Army Gen. Jorg Vollmer, who commands Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, questioned whether NATO officials fully understand Beijing’s business involvement in Europe’s transportation infrastructure. Chinese companies have been snapping up shares in most of Europe’s major ports, for example, leading local planners to wonder if that could impede NATO’s military mobility during a conflict.

One of the tools for keeping abreast of Chinese influence over transportation and telecommunications infrastructure involves a data “dashboard” for mapping Chinese investments related to its Belt and Road Initiative, alliance officials told Defense News earlier this year. The dashboard system was designed to aggregate open-source information to serve as a decision-making tool for NATO planners.

“We are concerned about infrastructure ownership,” Peach said, adding that alliance officials are striving to deepening their understanding of what’s at stake. “Sometimes ownership isn’t absolutely clear. We will continue to study this issue, and we will also continue to respond in terms of mobility and resilience.”

The ambitious targets for the five drones, now based at Sigonella air base in Sicily, come as the NATO Allied Ground Surveillance program aims for full operating capability status in 2024.

Some 350 staff with the AGS program are already based at Sigonella, a number which will rise to 600 by the time FOC status is obtained. Those staff members will handle data from the drones’ Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator capability, said AGS chief Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell.

“NATO AGS receives an unbelievable amount of data during each flight. We will continue to onboard greater numbers of intelligence analysts to handle the increasing amount of SAR images and GMTI data,” the U.S. official told Defense News.

After years of delays, AGS reached initial operating capability in February 2021 after the last of its fleet of five drones arrived in November 2020.

Based on the American RQ-4 Global Hawk airframe, the NATO drones are referred to as RQ-4D Phoenix aircraft.

Owned by a collective of 15 NATO members, the platforms now operate over NATO countries, flying to 60,000 feet with a range of 8,700 nautical miles.

Access to the airspace of NATO partners and other non-NATO nations must be regulated through bilateral or multilateral agreements, officials said.

No sooner had it arrived, one of the five has been flown to California to be equipped with the so-called GMTI-over-Sea capability, allowing it to track moving maritime targets as well as moving land targets.

“NATO AGS looks to support both land and maritime operations,” Cantwell said. “This radar enhancement will improve our ability to contribute to the maritime surface picture in defense of the alliance.”

The data link known as Link 16 is also due to be added to the drones as full operating capability approaches. On the ground, Cantwell said the data-processing operation was now mature enough to handle input from other platforms, not just the five Phoenix drones.

“We already receive raw intelligence data from other platforms and perform analysis in support of NATO commanders and decision-makers,” he said.

Flying hours are also on the rise. Currently, with its initial operating status, just one of the drones, on a rotating basis, is making one 12-hour flight per week. A flight of that length will give a drone 1-2 hours on station in the Baltics.

When full operating capability is reached in 2024, individual flights will see an extension to 30 hours, with the fleet reaching a total of about 100 hours of flight time weekly, according to projections.

Phoenix flights are undertaken at high altitude, above commercial flight paths in regulated corridors.

To reach the right altitude, the drones climb after takeoff from Sigonella out over the Mediterranean Sea. Impact on regular aircraft leaving nearby Catania airport is avoided, as the Italian air traffic control system coordinates the AGS aircraft, just as it also handles U.S. Air Force Global Hawks, which also operate from Sigonella.

There are also designated emergency airfields available should an AGS drone need to make an emergency landing while over a NATO country.

Recent press reports suggested that U.S. Global Hawks flying out of Sigonella were the target of jamming by Russia as they carry out surveillance around the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula and eastern Ukraine.

Cantwell declined to say if AGS drones had been targeted, but did note: “Any aircraft operating in the vicinity of adversarial emitters can experience the effects of jamming. NATO AGS takes all threats seriously and monitors the situation closely to best understand any and all risks associated with operating around the NATO alliance.”