NATO Gets New Tools To Monitor Ukraine And The Eastern Flank

NATO is expanding its satellite surveillance capacities to scan large swaths of land, enabling the alliance to monitor military movements in Ukraine and on Russia's borders with its eastern members, top commander Pierre Vandier said.

Vandier told Bloomberg News the new tool will for the first time allow the alliance to observe "huge areas,” allowing it to observe maneuvers, troop movements and battlefield operations.

The ability to monitor adherence to a possible ceasefire in Ukraine has been at the heart of Europeans' concerns, with a coalition of the willing led by France and the UK exploring options and hoping to secure US backing, Bloomberg earlier reported.

"Today we're not certain the Russians will stop at Ukraine,” said Vandier, stressing the importance of reassuring countries on the alliance's eastern flank. "We'll be able to tell them: We're watching,” he added.

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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said late on Wednesday that it had selected American satellite imagery provider Planet Labs for the new initiative, named Smart Indication And Warning Broad Area Detection (SINBAD). Its aim is to scan areas of the globe very frequently year-round, with AI helping to flag any changes and issue warnings.

The technology could also be used to monitor the Arctic, which is of increasing importance for NATO as Russian and Chinese ambitions in the area grow, according to a NATO official who requested anonymity.

NATO started developing space surveillance after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. SINBAD is a pilot project launching ahead of NATO's larger space surveillance rollout planned for January 2026, according to an alliance official.

Space surveillance is one of the key areas in which NATO heavily relies on the capabilities of the US. Other alliance members are trying to rebalance their dependency on the US following President Donald Trump's tilt away from Europe to focus on threats from Asia.

"Over the past 30 years we've had a fairly static military system and our armies are roughly half the size they were when the Berlin Wall fell,” said Vandier.

The commander stressed the need for Europe to introduce more competitive technologies into its armed forces, which he said could also help reduce the costs of military rearmament.

"Areas like banking are now more advanced than armies,” Vandier said, comparing the speed of evolution in new military technologies such as armed drones to fighter jets, which can sometimes take more than a decade.

NATO defense ministers last week approved one of the most ambitious commitments to raising weapons stocks since the Cold War as part of European and Canadian efforts to re-arm and take over more of their own defense from the US.

At a NATO leaders' summit in The Hague on June 24-25, allies will likely agree on a new spending target of five percent of economic output - comprised of 3.5% on core-defense and 1.5% on defense-related spending - one of Trump's key demands.

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