Russian Cable Attacks Spotlight Possible NATO Space Use Case

COLORADO SPRINGS—As NATO seeks to quickly grow its space capabilities, the alliance is aiming to take advantage of commercially developed innovations, particularly those advanced within member countries.

Citing artificial intelligence (AI)-supported space-based analytics to track suspected Russian cable cutting ships as an example of a potential future use case, Col. Jonathan Whitaker, Chief of Staff of Combined Forces Space Component Command for NATO, says “we want to be at the forefront of commercial integration—perhaps in a way that no other defense organization is—because of our unique alliance and the opportunities that exist within 32 nations.”

The initiative is focused on bringing in space innovations to support the Concept for Deterrence and Defense of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA), a set of military plans guiding NATO’s collective defense efforts. “We help the nations understand what type of capabilities and effects that we would need in broad categories to service the DDA for NATO’s warfighting plans—what we do not have and what you can do for us,” Whitaker says.

Speaking at the Space Foundation’s 40th annual Space Symposium here, Whitaker says NATO is encouraging commercial entities to “show us those novel use cases.” A recent example is when signals intelligence company Hawkeye 360 presented an unsolicited example of how its AI-supported analytics could help track a Russian ship suspected of cutting cables in the Baltic Sea.

Incidents of damage to subsea fiber optic cables have been on the rise since October 2023 when at least 11 cables in the Baltic were damaged. There are more than 500 similar cables around the world that carry 95% of data, voice and internet traffic between countries, but their underwater location makes them difficult to monitor and protect.

“Hawkeye 360 took a NATO problem set, which they had not been tasked to do, and showed what could be done with their RF [radio frequency] sensing constellation,” Whitaker said. He added that the suspected Russian sabotage of the cables “is of great interest to NATO nations and definitely falls within our area of interest as an alliance.”

The use case, which was presented by Hawkeye 360 at a Geographic Information System conference in the UK in March, showed how the company “was able to use their constellation to downselect potential candidates and then track that ship around the globe. It could then show all the dark interactions that ship was making with other networks of known bad actors. That is something we didn’t necessarily know we needed,” he says.