NATO Summit Produces Satellite Mega-Constellation, $3.5 Billion Air Defense Deal, and a GPS Warning Europe Is Taking Seriously

Eight Countries, One Satellite Network

Eight NATO allies announced plans at the alliance's Summit Defence Industry Forum in Ankara, Turkey, to connect their military satellites into a unified network called the Hybrid Alliance Layered Operations in Space, or HALO. The participating nations are Denmark, Canada, Finland, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Turkey, according to Breaking Defense, which spoke directly with a NATO official at the summit.

The goal is blunt: overcome "the cost, time and coverage limitations of single-nation satellite fleets," as a NATO press release put it. HALO is designed to enable high-speed communications, intelligence gathering, and missile tracking.

The NATO official described the project as still in early stages and said more allies are expected to join. Funding structure and constellation architecture have not been finalized and will be determined as the project develops.

HALO parallels the U.S. Space Force's push to build a Space Data Network using SpaceX Starshield satellites, the military-grade variant of Starlink, as a backbone connecting mission-specific constellations. The initial American focus is supporting the Trump administration's Golden Dome missile defense initiative.

Also at the Ankara summit, Spain became the 19th member of the Allied Persistent Surveillance from Space program, known as APSS. That network, created in 2023 and formally absorbed into NATO in 2024, includes a virtual intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance constellation called Aquila. APSS achieved initial operational capability last December. NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska announced during the summit that Turkey is building two new high-resolution ISR satellites under contracts worth more than $300 million with TUBITAK, Turkey's Space Technology and Research Institute.

Belgium and the Netherlands Sign $3.5 Billion Air Defense Deal

In the most concrete dollar commitment to come out of Ankara, Belgium announced it is investing €3.1 billion ($3.5 billion) in a joint air defense procurement with the Netherlands.

The package covers 10 Kongsberg NASAMS launchers, 20 Rheinmetall SkyRanger 30 systems, 14 Thales GM200 Multi Mission Radars, and 54 Iveco command vehicles. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken called it the country rebuilding "its own powerful air defence capability" after a 20-year gap.

Belgian companies will participate in producing launch systems, software, electronics, radar components, cybersecurity products, and maintenance work. The Dutch contribution has not been publicly disclosed. The Netherlands Ministry of Defence had not provided figures by press time, according to Breaking Defense.

Brussels also approved participation in a joint purchase of up to 10 Saab GlobalEye surveillance aircraft to replace NATO's aging E-3 fleet, and signed a letter of intent with the Czech Republic, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom on Airbus A400M transport cooperation. Separately, NATO allies collectively announced plans to spend more than $40 billion on counter-drone capabilities over the next five years, targeting threats including Russian Shahed attack drones.

The GPS Problem No One in Washington Has Fixed

Russian satellites have been deliberately interfering with GPS signals across northern Europe, Greenland, and Canada since 2019, according to findings reported by the New York Times. Researchers at the University of Texas documented this vulnerability. The same satellites have been interfering with BeiDou, China's satellite navigation system, in a nearly identical pattern since 2020, which analysts say makes the intentionality of Russia's program clear.

The interference has been sporadic, short in duration, and difficult to detect, designed as a covert electronic weapon capability. No similar interference events have been observed in the continental United States, but the Russian satellites involved can reach any point on the globe.

The concern is serious enough that Marc Berkowitz, the current Assistant Secretary of War for Space Policy, described this "NAVWAR asymmetry" as a significant danger for America in a 2024 paper. GPS signals underpin financial networks, power grids, aviation, military operations, and civilian communications. A sustained disruption would not be a minor inconvenience.

Those skeptical of alarm note that Russia's jamming has remained covert, limited in scope, and has not escalated to an actual attack on GPS satellites. The U.S. military has redundant positioning systems and hardened platforms that reduce dependence on civilian GPS.

However, the gap remains real. The United Kingdom, France, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and other allies have built or are actively building terrestrial navigation and timing systems that function as GPS backups. The United States has not. Despite administration officials and members of Congress citing an urgent need for more than 20 years, the U.S. government has yet to act on such a system.

HALO and APSS together represent NATO trying to build resilience from the top—satellite layers that are harder to knock out wholesale. But the terrestrial backup gap means that if Russia's GPS jamming escalated from a covert exercise to an active denial campaign, civilian and some military systems in the U.S. would be more exposed than those of its closest allies.

Whether Congress will fund a terrestrial GPS backup before that gap becomes an operational problem rather than a theoretical one remains to be seen.