Picogrid Partners with Alta Ares for NATO Air Defense
El Segundo, CA, July 22, 2025 — Picogrid announced today a new partnership with Alta Ares, a startup developing autonomous guidance systems for affordable air defense interceptor drones. Alta Ares is the latest member to join Picogrid’s Partner Ecosystem, a group of companies committed to joint interoperability.
The partnership addresses a pressing operational gap for the U.S. and NATO allies: the lack of scalable, cost-effective defenses against loitering munitions and glide bombs. These weapons—often inexpensive, expendable, and deployed in large quantities—are designed to circumvent traditional air defense systems. Intercepting them with existing Western platforms, such as advanced surface-to-air missiles, is often prohibitively expensive and unsustainable in prolonged conflicts.
Last month, Picogrid and Alta Ares participated in a NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT) exercise in Biscarrosse, France, to explore how the joint solution would function. Much like the U.S. Army Transformation Initiative, other NATO nations are increasingly adopting startup-driven, iterative engineering to stay ahead of evolving threats.