Fusion on paper or in practice? Making the cloud work for ISR and ...

Fusion on paper or in practice? Making the cloud work for ISR and NATO - Atlantic Council

Executive summary

NATO’s eastern flank faces a transformed operational environment defined by persistent hybrid threats that expose critical gaps in intelligence fusion and response timelines. Airspace incursions, undersea-cable sabotage, cyber intrusions, information campaigns, and targeted GPS jamming are not just isolated events, but elements of a sustained Russian strategy to probe defenses, test resolve, and impose continuous strain on a NATO systems architecture designed for episodic crises rather than persistent, multi-domain competition below the threshold of armed conflict.

The Alliance’s core challenge is not sensing capacity. NATO and its members field capable Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms across all domains. The problem lies in speed, integration, and trust. Data remains fragmented across national systems, shared selectively, and processed through architectures ill-suited for today’s tempo of operations. Without corresponding investments in shared infrastructure, paired with clear standards, adopting emerging technologies and modernizing systems risk amplifying friction rather than reducing it.

The June 2025 NATO commitment to invest 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) annually in defense and security-related spending by 2035 could address some of these issues. However, absent deliberate guidance, new resources may be absorbed by legacy platforms and approaches, producing fragmentation at greater scale.

I. A persistent threat environment on NATO’s eastern flank

NATO’s eastern flank is under persistent pressure across multiple domains. Airspace incursions, maritime sabotage, cyber intrusions, and deliberate information operations all occurred last year and have become routine. These are not isolated incidents, but part of a sustained Russian strategy to probe Alliance defenses, test political resolve, and impose continuous operational and cognitive strain on NATO and its member states.

II. Cloud-enabled warfare: Lessons from Ukraine and the limits of the Alliance

NATO must strive to find convergence in shared and trustworthy infrastructure. No single vendor will be able to provide all that each member of the Alliance requires, but NATO can articulate clear and common technical standards which, in turn, will enforce meaningful interoperability. Cloud-enabled warfare is not only a technical transformation, but an institutional one that requires NATO to reconcile operational speed with collective governance, and technological advantage with political reality.

III. Intelligence sharing, trust, and NATO’s structural constraints

The NATO alliance of thirty-two countries does not possess an organic, centralized intelligence agency. Instead, the Alliance relies on thirty-two different intelligence production cycles and voluntary sharing. Each state determines what intelligence to share, when