New NATO initiative to bolster alliance’s space-based data collection
NATO is launching a new effort to streamline the process of gathering and sharing data collected in space with the alliance’s members. The ‘Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space’ (APSS) initiative is designed to facilitate smoother data flows between members gathered via space-based sensors to improve intelligence operations.
While NATO explicitly rejects the notion of becoming an ‘autonomous space actor,’ members increasingly consider space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to be vital to its mission. This ‘data-centric approach’ is motivated and reinforced in part by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the intrusion of a Chinese spy balloon into American airspace, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.