On Thursday, NATO launched two new multinational initiatives, High-Visibility, aimed at strengthening the defense of its airspace and enhancing the resilience of the military capabilities. At the ceremony of signing, held at NATO headquarters, 15 member countries committed to develop more effective solutions to reduce the threat of airspace incursions at lower altitudes – that is, incursions by aircraft flying below 500 feet/150 meters, which is less than the height of the Eiffel Tower.
"The war in Ukraine demonstrated how effective and dangerous technologies such as small drones can be in conflict." Enhancing NATO's capabilities for detection, identification, tracking, and responding to these new threats and simultaneous use of technological innovations to strengthen resilience and capabilities is deemed necessary for the Alliance, "the NATO statement says.
Through projects on low-level airspace threats and passive air surveillance, participating member countries are tasked with developing and refining new capabilities together, as well as increasing coherence between national capabilities, while minimizing spending and enhancing operational efficiencies.
At the ceremony, the allies also welcomed new participants in existing projects. Romania joined Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom in the Modular Ground-Based Air Defense (GBAD) project for ground-based air and missile defense (Modular GBAD). Launched in 2023, the project aims to develop a modular solution to counter low-level airspace threats at very short, short, and medium ranges.
