Category: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

“Through this SPS-supported project, NATO is bringing together Allies, prominent institutions including the Cornell, John Hopkins and Swedish Defence Universities and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as well as telecommunications companies to address the urgent need for a more resilient internet infrastructure worldwide,” said Dr Eyup Turmus, SPS Advisor and Programme Manager at NATO.

The project aims to produce a working prototype within two years, with a demonstration planned at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, a NATO Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) Maritime Research Centre in Sweden. The Hybrid Space/Submarine Architecture Ensuring Infosec of Telecommunications (HEIST) consortium leading the project aims to develop a hybrid network combining submarine cables and satellite communications to ensure a continuous flow of data. It will bring together existing technologies, address legal and jurisdictional challenges, and foster international collaboration between NATO Allies and partners, including the US, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland.

• helping meet Ukraine’s urgent needs through innovative solutions;
• strengthening Ukraine’s innovation system and making it more resilient;
• enhancing cooperation between NATO’s and Ukraine’s innovation networks;
• sharing best practice on Ukrainian technologies and tactics;
• bolstering NATO’s military innovation and technological change.

By bringing together entrepreneurs, technology companies, venture capitalists, students, researchers, and defence innovation agencies, this roadmap aims to tackle Ukraine’s pressing problems and turn them into battlefield successes. It establishes NATO as a central platform through which Ukraine can communicate its needs for new technologies, encourage innovation, and invite the public and private sector to match those needs. 

The roadmap encourages stronger ties between NATO and Ukraine’s innovation initiatives, including through prize challenges, hackathons, and other collaborative activities. For example, in June, NATO and Ukraine launched the first-ever Defence Innovators Forum, which brought together more than 450 start-ups, investors, and government officials to address real-world challenges. These and similar efforts in the future will help unlock Ukraine’s innovation potential and ensure both NATO and Ukraine can find innovative solutions to real-world operational challenges. 

Skydiving was initially a hobby for Violeta – one that she literally threw herself into with enthusiasm. By the time she was asked to join the Aerial Parachute Unit of the Lithuanian Armed Forces’ Field Army Brigade in 1992, she had already completed an impressive 1,000 jumps, averaging no less than 142 jumps a year. Thanks to her already vast experience, she was awarded the honorary title of “Parachute Master” shortly after joining the armed forces. Violeta had managed to turn the passion she discovered when she was just 15 years old into her career.

Having joined the Lithuanian Armed Forces just a couple of years after the restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990, Master Sergeant Nikonovė has been part of her country’s historic journey to becoming a NATO Ally in 2004. In her career, this has meant modernising Lithuania’s parachute regiments to meet NATO standards and contributing to the development of Lithuania’s Parachute Training Centre.

The Centre, where Violeta currently serves, has evolved beyond training solely the Lithuanian Armed Forces – it now also trains troops from NATO partner countries, including Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. Through her tireless dedication, Violeta has been instrumental in teaching and mentoring generations of Lithuanians and partner troops alike.

What made you want to become a parachutist? When did you start and what was your first jump like?

My brother was a hobby parachutist and he invited me to join a parachute club he was part of when I was 15. I spent three months learning about the theory and other aspects of parachuting and in the spring of that year, we went for the first jump. I remember it very well. As the plane took off, my legs were shaking and eventually my brother signalled it was time to jump. The sensation of jumping was very exhilarating, but it was difficult because the wind that day was quite strong and physically I was very light, so I was blown a bit off course and ended up landing in a farm.

Did you know after your first jump that you wanted to go again?

Absolutely. Despite my fears when the plane took off, I immediately wanted to do it again. When I did my first jump, on that day, I only completed a single jump; however, my second jump was the very next day. This one was actually scarier, but my brother and other members of the parachutist club encouraged me to go. During my landing for my second jump, I had a very difficult time disconnecting from the parachute and I was dragged across the ground for a long time before my brother was able to come and help me.

Since that second jump you have clearly come a long way – what kind of physical exercises do you need to do to be a parachutist? What kinds of strengths do you find most important?

Parachuting requires general physical training. To become a good skydiver, you need a strong back, shoulders, arms and legs to be able to make more than one jump a day.

Can you explain what a “forced deployment” parachute jump means? How is it different from “freefall” jumping?

Forced deployment means a parachutist performs jumps with a round parachute that deploys automatically at a pre-determined altitude. This reduces the risk of human error and makes the jump safer for troops. If parachutists wish to continue developing their skills, they can aim for the Freefall course at our Training Centre, and learn how to deploy their parachutes manually. Every year, we train about 200 forced parachutists and 20 freefall parachutists and, as such, it is hard to count how many we have trained over the last 30 years!

With over 5,000 jumps to your record, has a jump ever gone wrong?

Yes, some jumps do not go as planned. There have been three jumps where I had to use the reserve parachute because the main parachute deployed poorly and was not fit for landing. Otherwise, I had two particularly rough landings, which led to two screws in my knee joint.

What was the feeling when you had to use the reserve parachute for the first time? When you had one of these bad jumps or rough landings, did you want to stop for a while?

The first time I used the reserve parachute, I had already done 800 jumps. On that jump, I had to unhook a badly deployed main parachute and deploy the reserve. I did everything automatically, but when I used the reserve parachute, it was of course a little uncomfortable. I was very careful how I operated the parachute because there is no other reserve parachute. Still, I made two more jumps that day. The discomfort disappeared when I realised after the analysis that I had done everything well and correctly, so it was ultimately a good experience. 

It seems like you have to be fearless to be a parachutist… but do you have any phobias or fears?

I have always been afraid of blood. I used to faint whenever I saw it. However, being in the Lithuanian Armed Forces, I have actually had the chance to participate in and graduate from the army paramedic course, so I am fully qualified as an Army Paramedic in addition to my Chief Instructor duties. After this course and the training needed to become a paramedic, blood does not bother me! Similarly, although I have never been afraid of skydiving from a plane, I was scared of diving underwater. But through my experience in the army, I have also completed several swimming courses and dove three times with our army combat divers. I think any of our phobias exist in our minds and can ultimately be overcome step by step.

You have completed 5,000 jumps. How many jumps does this mean in a year? How did you reach this huge number?

There are actually skydiving competitions and I was part of the Lithuanian national team, participating in world championships and the like. During this time, I was jumping more than usual, completing around 200 to 300 jumps per year.

How long were you part of the Lithuanian national team? Are there any competitions you won individually or as a team?

I was on the Lithuanian national team for over 20 years. I was the Lithuanian champion many times in the women’s event, and I also participated in the men’s event, because I was the only one of the women who was jumping professionally as part of my military career. I also did a lot of jumps with the team, and we were champions many times. I’ve lost count!

How does a parachutist celebrate the 5,000th jump?

Every 1,000 jumps are usually celebrated in some way or another. Typically, the 1,000th jump is a clutch in freefall, which is where a group of divers join up mid-air, clutching hands and legs together.

For my 5,000th jump, I was on the job and training a soldier. After this jump, my colleagues and I celebrated at a sauna and had a feast. It was a very nice celebration!

The Lithuanian Parachute Training Centre teaches parachutists from NATO partner countries. Do you also cooperate with troops from other NATO Allies?

I participate in training sessions with NATO troops for parachute jumps, and assist if they need our help. We also participate in international symposia where we can learn about innovations and share experiences and problems. We also cooperate with civilian parachutists.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

I love being able to share my passion and experience with others. I have been very fortunate to develop my parachute skills and it has allowed me to share my knowledge with parachutists who have made fewer jumps than me, as well as to learn from those who have jumped even more than me. It is very rewarding to see how people develop through parachuting and it’s fun to see beginners improve, learn how to act in extreme situations and become physically as well as mentally stronger. For me and for many students it has been a gift, not only in our professional military careers but also in our lives as a whole.

Recently, the Parachute Training Centre has added two new instructors: former students, whom we trained from their very first jump. For me, watching their evolution from first jump to instructor has made me very proud to be part of the Lithuanian Armed Forces and has been very rewarding personally and professionally.

Through the NISRF, Allies cooperate closely to collect, analyse and share intelligence data across all domains, including space. This helps to enhance reporting and support NATO missions and operations. The NISRF is an important part of the larger NATO intelligence network across NATO Headquarters, the NATO Command Structure, the NATO Force Structure, and multinational and national networks. 

Enhancing the NISRF’s capabilities will strengthen NATO’s overall ISR capabilities and early warning and control. These efforts include the Alliance Future Surveillance and Control (AFSC) programme, the Digital Ocean initiative, the multinational initiatives for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), and Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space (APSS).

Mr Stoltenberg welcomed the appointment: “The Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel regions are important to our Alliance. Javier Colomina has extensive experience in dealing with NATO partners. His appointment will further strengthen NATO’s important work in the South.”
 
As the Special Representative for the southern neighbourhood, Mr Colomina will serve as NATO’s focal point for the region. He will be responsible for coordinating and enhancing the visibility of NATO’s efforts in the south and will strengthen engagement with partners.
 
At the Washington Summit, Allies agreed on an action plan that will increase NATO’s engagement in the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel regions. The appointment of the Special Representative is part of this plan.

The updated Policy Guidelines focus NATO’s counter-terrorism work on three key areas: improving awareness of the terrorist threat; ensuring adequate capabilities and preparedness; and enhancing engagement and cooperation with NATO’s partner countries and other international organisations. Heads of State and Government also reiterated and refined the main principles of the Alliance’s fight against terrorism: compliance with international law, support to Allies and non-duplication and complementarity. 

On the margins of the Washington Summit, the updated Policy Guidelines and their implications for NATO’s work to combat terrorism were outlined by the Secretary General’s Special Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, Tom Goffus, in a session of NATO’s Public Forum, titled “Addressing the Evolving Threat of Terrorism” on 11 July 2024. “Our most important document after the Washington Treaty is the Strategic Concept,” he stated, while reflecting that terrorism is the most direct asymmetric threat to the security of citizens and to international peace and prosperity.  “We now have defence plans both for Russia and for terrorism… we have the most detailed plans ever for terrorism,” he shared. 

Click here to read the full Policy Guidelines on Counter-Terrorism. 

“The time to stand for freedom and democracy is now and the place is Ukraine” Mr Stoltenberg said, announcing that NATO’s new command to coordinate and provide security assistance and training for Ukraine will become operational in September this year.

The Secretary General also condemned “a pattern of Russian hostile actions against NATO Allies” including cyber-attacks, sabotage and disinformation campaigns. Allies are responding by sharing more intelligence, stepping up the protection of critical infrastructure, and conducting national legal processes. Mr Stoltenberg made clear that the purpose of Russia’s attacks is “to coerce us from providing support to Ukraine, but we will not be coerced.”

The Secretary General was welcomed to the meeting at Blenheim Palace by the UK Prime Minister, Kier Starmer.  The EPC brings around 50 European leaders together, mostly NATO Allies and partners, to discuss issues affecting European security, including defending democracy, energy and cyber security, instrumentalised migration and Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

In approving this Plan, Council agreed the 2025 ceilings for the common-funded Military and Civil Budgets, as well as for NATO’s Security Investment Programme, allocating EUR 4.4 billion in funding. This funding is mainly aimed at strengthening NATO’s deterrence and defence, providing core military capabilities, fulfilling responsibilities in Alliance operations and missions, and enabling NATO’s consultation, and command and control, processes. Along with decisions taken at the recent Washington Summit, the Plan includes funding for priority activities in support of Ukraine, such as NATO Security Assistance and Training to Ukraine (NSATU) and the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre (JATEC). 

Common funding is a powerful expression of equitable burden sharing and resolve amongst Allies. 

Read the public version of the CFRP 2025-2029.
 

The NATO 2099 graphic novel takes place in a world that experienced a devastating series of global maritime attacks throughout the 2050s. During these ‘Sea Wars’, small groups of malicious actors used unmanned technologies to blow up the warships of national navies, hold cruise ships hostage for ransom, and commit terrorist acts against civilians. After working together to defeat the networks of terrorist groups and private militias, the governments of the world signed a treaty that has kept the peace for almost 40 years. But now, in 2099, a new threat emerges in space…

Putting the story together

In October 2023, the NATO Defense College put out a call for authors from all NATO member countries to submit stories imagining the future of NATO in 2099 – 75 years from the 75th anniversary in 2024.

By early 2024, the NDC had received stories from science fiction authors representing all NATO Allies and some partner countries. After reading through all the stories, four common themes were clear: NATO in space, the effects of climate change on security and defence, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military domain, and a female NATO Secretary General.

Over the following months, three lead authors from the NDC’s editorial team wove together these four main threads, merging the stories of 34 authors to create a single fictional narrative. The authors then worked with artist Jaouen Salaün, assisted by Nicolas Minvielle and Roxane Montfort,to create the finished product, which includes hundreds of panels illustrating the story.

They also decided to release a selection of the standalone stories as a teaser of the full novel. On 4 April 2024, to celebrate NATO’s 75th anniversary, the NDC published NATO 2099 – The science fiction anthology. Its 15 stories depict a wide range of imaginative elements (which represent the views of the authors, and not NATO or the NDC). This includes:

• telepathic weaponry
• a floating ocean city built on the wealth of harvesting pure water from icebergs
• a rogue AI that was originally created to preserve the consciousness of China’s leader
• the enlargement of NATO to include Japan, Australia and other countries in the Indo-Pacific
• an AI nation state, unbound by territory, also joining NATO
• an AI Secretary General of NATO
• a 2099 NATO Summit in Kyiv, Ukraine
• Russia seeking an alliance with NATO after China targets eastern Siberia for its resources
• libraries becoming highly valuable military targets, since they are used to train AI
• synthetic tea, locust soufflé and other exotic foods
• an extended ode to NATO’s past and future history, using a poetic rhyme scheme

Using science fiction for defence planning

The NATO 2099 graphic novel has two key sources of inspiration.

The first is a collection of forward-looking essays, each contributed by a different European Union (EU) member country, which France produced during its Presidency of the Council of the EU (from 1 January to 30 June 2022).

The other source of inspiration is Red Team Défense, a programme run by France’s Defence Innovation Agency since 2019. The Red Team is composed of science fiction authors and scriptwriters who work closely with scientific and military experts to imagine the threats that could directly endanger France and its interests in the future – focusing on the technological, economic, societal and environmental trends that could generate potential conflicts by 2030-2060 – so that the armed forces can prepare to meet these challenges.
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Other NATO Allies have also used science fiction for security and defence planning purposes. Canada’s Department of National Defence published a science fiction novel called Crisis in Zefra in 2005, imagining a Canadian peacekeeping force encountering new threats and technologies while monitoring an election in a fictional African country in 2025. The United States Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) launched the Mad Scientist Laboratory initiative in 2016, which produced Science Fiction: Visioning the Future of Warfare 2030-2050. Germany’s Projekt Cassandra, supported by the Federal Ministry of Defence from 2017 to 2019, aimed to use literature as an “early warning system to avoid being surprised” by “supposedly sudden” events, which were actually apparent in a region’s literary output. Similar initiatives are also under way in other Allied countries.

Tomorrow’s NATO survives through resilience – just like today’s

Future-casting can be extremely dystopian, particularly when considering the catastrophic impacts of climate change and the use of new technologies by authoritarian regimes. The NDC editorial team was therefore surprised by the overall positive tone of the submitted stories.

The authors imagine a future where fusion technology has led to a sustainable global energy system and atmospheric carbon removal is a major economic sector. Where diplomatic solutions among former adversaries are possible, including total nuclear disarmament. Where reforestation and environmental restoration become the priority of the world’s militaries, and “the armies of all countries are given a hoe before a rifle and seeds before bullets.” Despite challenges on the horizon, the dominant view of NATO in 2099 is one of hope.

Of course, many of the stories include negative developments in their future histories, such as the attempted invasion of Taiwan, or the United States withdrawing from NATO (and then returning). But overall, the 2099 depicted in the anthology and the graphic novel is one where NATO has weathered these storms and grown stronger. In 2099, as in 2024, the keys to NATO’s success are its resilience, its unity in the face of any crisis, and its ability to adapt to meet the world’s ever-evolving challenges – whether those futures are predicted or remain unforeseen.

Through NATO’s Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP) for Ukraine, Allies are providing short-term and medium-to-long term non-lethal assistance. Since February 2022, NATO has delivered urgently needed assistance in multiple areas, including fuel, medical supplies, winter clothing, generators and communication systems.

In Washington, Allied Heads of State and Government endorsed the CAP’s long-term projects for recovery and reconstruction, institutional transformation, and transition towards NATO interoperability. These include:

• Support for the launch of the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre (JATEC) in Bydgoszcz, Poland. JATEC is the first joint NATO-Ukraine organization and an important pillar of NATO-Ukraine relations. It will identify and apply lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine and contribute to NATO’s deterrence and defence and increase interoperability between Allied and Ukrainian forces. Allied Defence Ministers agreed to establish JATEC at the NATO-Ukraine Council in February 2024.
   
• Support for Ukraine’s interoperability efforts. In September 2023, NATO and Ukraine agreed a Concept for Interoperability, which integrates interoperability requirements into Ukraine’s long-term capability development plans. This roadmap, endorsed at the 2024 Washington Summit, supports Ukraine’s defence and security sector with NATO’s assistance.
   
• Defence procurement. NATO and Ukraine are collaborating on a joint Strategic Defence Procurement Review to align Ukraine’s defence procurement with Euro-Atlantic best practices. This initiative will help Ukraine improve its defence procurement system and promote greater effectiveness, accountability, and transparency, further advancing Ukraine’s integration with NATO. 

The Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine was launched in 2016 to support Ukraine’s ability to bolster its own security, implement wide-ranging reforms, and meet Ukraine’s immediate needs in its defence against Russia’s war of aggression.