Sensors will locate enemy forces and activate automated zone defense systems. First elements are already being tested as part of pilot projects in Poland and Romania.
NATO is planning to strengthen its defenses on European borders with Russia over the next two years, creating a “automated zone” defense system with almost no soldiers, a German general told the press this Saturday.
This plan will include a defense zone that the enemy will have to cross before advancing, a “kind of hot zone,” Brigadier General Thomas Lowin, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Land Command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in Izmir, Turkey, told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
As the general explained, sensors will locate enemy forces and activate defense systemssuch as armed drones, partially autonomous combat vehicles, unmanned ground robots, as well as automated air and missile defense devices.
The sensors, which must cover an area of several thousand kilometers, will be located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace or in the air”, according to Thomas Lowin. And they will be able to aggregate data on “the movements or use of weapons by the adversary” to inform “all NATO countries in real time”, he added.
However, the final decision to use these weapons will remain “always a human responsibility.”
It is also about reinforcing existing weapons arsenals, keeping troops stationed “at the same level” as today and using dematerialized information technology (cloud) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to control the system, he concludes.
The first elements are already being tested as part of pilot projects in Poland and Romania.
The entire NATO device should be implemented, if possible, by the end of 2027, according to information from Welt am Sonntag.
The defense of Europe’s eastern border must be an “immediate” priority, due to the Russian threat, requested in December, in a joint statement, the leaders of eight countries in northern and eastern Europe (Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria).
