Denmark has joined NATO's Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) Expansion initiative, which aims to strengthen the alliance's capabilities in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). At the same time, the Danish defence company Terma has announced that it will contribute AI-based solutions to develop NATO's future operational intelligence architecture.
According to a press release from Terma, Denmark signed a Letter of Intent to join AGS Expansion during NATO's Defence Industry Forum in Ankara (Turkey). The programme is described as a further development of NATO's Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) capability and will strengthen the alliance's ISR capacity through expanded surveillance of areas including the Arctic, the Baltic Sea, and other strategically important regions.
Terma states that AGS Expansion will establish a platform-independent architecture capable of integrating data from airborne, maritime, ground-based, and, in due course, space-based sensors. The objective is to improve information sharing, common situational awareness, and operational decision-making within NATO.
The company already contributes to NATO AGS with AI models for Automated Target Recognition (ATR) and Automated Target Identification (ATID). Through AGS Expansion, Terma will also develop AI-based training tools that enable NATO and participating nations to further develop these models in line with operational requirements.
"Modern defence is no longer limited by the ability to collect information. The challenge is to transform large volumes of data into operational intelligence quickly enough for military decision-makers to act," says Steen Hommel, Executive Vice President Government & Partnerships at Terma, in the company's press release.
According to NATO, Letters of Intent are used as a first step in establishing new multinational capability projects. This is normally followed by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which governs the continued cooperation before projects enter the implementation phase.