NATO Tests USV Capability Integration into Operational Task Groups

NATO has tested its capability to integrate uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) into its operational task groups. The capability demonstration – which took place on a training range in the Baltic Sea off Denmark, from 17-20 February – was a significant step in the development and operational integration of USVs into NATO Allied Command Operations (ACO) activities.

USVs can add mass for operational task groups, including providing surface surveillance that helps build maritime situational awareness. Such mass in surveillance and situational awareness is also critical in building deterrence in tasks like tackling threats to critical undersea infrastructure (CUI).

In a 21 February statement, NATO Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) and NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT) said NATO standing naval forces (SNFs) conducted the demonstration to help advance integration of innovative uncrewed technologies into alliance activities. Ships from Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) – led by its flagship, the Royal Netherlands Navy De Zeven Provincien air-defence and command frigate HNLMS Tromp –   participated, alongside Royal Danish Navy and German Navy assets. The activity included tactical manoeuvring between crewed and uncrewed assets and live-fire events, to test USV interoperability with a maritime task group, the statement said.

The activity harnessed both national and NATO spiral developments of USV capability, Vice Adm Utley continued.

The MARCOM/ACT statement also highlighted the current operational relevance of the demonstration, including in relation to Baltic Sea CUI threats. “The demonstration was … aimed at delivering capabilities that exploit emerging and disruptive technologies, including autonomous systems and artificial intelligence (AI), to enhance NATO’s situational awareness regarding sea lines of communication and CUI protection,” it said.

The Baltic Sea currently is a crucible for CUI-related incidents, so the demonstration represented another step in NATO’s continuing development of presence and surveillance capability and capacity to deter CUI threats in the Baltic and elsewhere. Using USVs and other uncrewed systems to help build situational awareness and understanding is central to NATO’s operational approach here.

MARCOM and ACT conducted the demonstration in partnership. ACT, along with NATO’s Task Force X initiative, provided the USVs. The activity combined ACT’s development of innovative capabilities designed to maintain alliance military effectiveness – especially its warfighting edge – with MARCOM’s operational command of NATO maritime forces.

The Task Force X initiative was launched in early February 2025, to support NATO aims of harnessing autonomy and digital capabilities to improve at-sea surveillance, for example supporting delivery of the alliance’s ‘Digital Ocean’ vision. “Task Force X is intended to be employed alongside NATO enhanced vigilance activities in support of ACO, to further reassure allies and deter acts of vandalism against CUI in the Baltic,” Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, said in the statement. “This collaborative effort will fill gaps in surveillance, particularly in areas not covered by existing systems like AIS, and improve our ability to detect vessels that may be operating without identification.”

Task Force X provides a framework within which NATO states can contribute autonomous capabilities to alliance activities in an integrated manner, Adm Vandier added. According to NATO, its broad aim is to develop use of maritime autonomous systems to provide persistent surveillance, threat detection and tracking, and enhanced situational awareness. 

ACO is leading NATO’s ‘Baltic Sentry’ maritime presence and surveillance activity, set up in January 2025 to build deterrent effect against Baltic Sea CUI threats. Here, SNMG1 and Standing NATO Mine Counter Measures Group 1 (SNMCMG1) provide the core alliance capacity. ‘Baltic Sentry’ was established in the wake of four instances of damage to CUI cables or pipelines in the region since September 2022. The three latest incidents – October 2023, November 2024, and December 2024 – have each been attributed in European public and political debates to commercial ships dragging their anchors across the seabed, and across CUI, while running at speed. Although there have been no public statements from Baltic countries or from NATO confirming these acts were deliberate, the debate has focused on the prospective involvement of ‘shadow fleet’ ships that operate ‘below the radar’, seeking for example to support rogue state efforts to evade international import/export sanctions.

NATO’s USV test was also part of building alliance capacity to use USVs for future vigilance activities in the Baltic Sea and across the Euro-Atlantic theatre, as these assets continue trials and integration into ACO activities.

USVs will provide NATO’s SNFs with greater operational flexibility in conducting situational awareness and vigilance activities across the Euro-Atlantic theatre. While the USVs involved in the test are not currently participating in ‘Baltic Sentry’, the demonstration tested NATO’s ability to operate with USVs and will inform continued integration and eventual capability fielding into the SNFs.

Vigilance activities have become a vital component of NATO’s application of its deterrence and defence posture at a regional level across the theatre since the Russo-Ukraine war erupted in February 2022. The demonstration was also a preparatory activity for NATO’s forthcoming ‘Dynamic Messenger’ exercise, an operational experimentation (OPEX) activity set to take place in tandem with the Portuguese Navy/NATO co-hosted ‘Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned Systems’ (‘REPMUS’) large-scale OPEX event that occurs each September in Portugal. ‘Dynamic Messenger’ was held alongside ‘REPMUS’ in 2022 and 2023.

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