A recent NATO gathering focused on technology, interoperability and the Alliance’s ability to fuse data and cue commanders when underwater infrastructure and shipping lanes face threats. The four-day digital wargame held in June 2025 allowed analysts, technologists and operational planners to connect seabed sensors and space-based imagery with conventional frigates, corvettes and submarines in a series of simulations under NATO’s “Digital Ocean Vision” banner.
Experts from the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom joined core NATO staff, underscoring the initiative’s open-architecture ethos and the Alliance’s determination to expand interoperability. Officials said insights will flow directly into Task Force X, a real-world mix of autonomous maritime systems scheduled to deploy in the Baltic Sea in the coming months.
“Task Force X will integrate uncrewed systems with existing naval forces before transitioning to a fully autonomous fleet, operating independently to counter threats and protect critical infrastructure. It will collect data between uncrewed systems and other emergent technologies, fuse that data within a resilient network and utilize artificial intelligence to shape situational awareness,” said NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Adm. Pierre Vandier. “This is one of many tangible examples of how NATO is rapidly adapting its forces to a changing international security environment and countering the threats against NATO Nations.”
The wargame represents the most recent milestone in a project that has been steadily gathering mass since defense ministers formally endorsed the Digital Ocean Vision in October 2023. That decision grew out of a series of pipeline and fiber-optic cable incidents that exposed the vulnerability of critical seabed infrastructure and demonstrated to Allies that a persistent, multidomain picture of the maritime environment had become as fundamental to deterrence as radar. By knitting together sensors from “seabed to space” and applying artificial intelligence to the resulting data lake, planners hope to move from reacting to maritime incidents to anticipating them, thereby reinforcing NATO’s multidomain deterrence posture.
Development is being driven from Allied Maritime Command in the U.K. and is nested within NATO’s broader digital-transformation portfolio, giving it access to common data standards and zero-trust cyber protections. Industrial acceleration comes via the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) and the NATO Innovation Fund, both of which have prioritized low-size-weight-and-power processors, energy-harvesting buoys and secure acoustic modems that smaller Allies can field at modest cost. The emphasis on commercial off-the-shelf technology means a simple, low-budget quadcopter can feed into the same operational picture used by a United States carrier strike group, illustrating how the initiative turns interoperability into a force multiplier rather than a budget race.
What sets Digital Ocean Vision apart from earlier maritime-awareness efforts is its insistence on creating a single common operating picture of the ocean — an endlessly refreshed model to which every Ally can both contribute and subscribe. Officials argue that this paradigm protects sovereignty and deepens trust, cementing the enduring partnerships that underpin NATO’s collective defense.
While hurdles remain, the June wargame demonstrated that when standards are agreed upon and laboratories are replaced with operational scenarios, emergent technologies can integrate quickly alongside legacy platforms. In an era when Russian naval activity and gray-zone seabed threats show no sign of abating, that ability to integrate at speed is critical.