As warfare becomes more data-driven, a robust C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) ecosystem is no longer a luxury, but an imperative. The ability to collect, curate, digest, and disseminate information, a process that AI could facilitate, is a new prerequisite for victory on today’s battlefield. Digital capabilities, able to transform streams of data into a situational awareness advantage, will become essential.
This highly digitised environment raises new challenges for the NATO alliance. The development of a digital backbone will become key to ensure the operational readiness of the alliance in the digital age. Taking stock of NATO’s digital platforms and its C4ISR infrastructure is therefore vital. As interoperability starts extending into the clouds, time has come to evaluate NATO’s digital capabilities.
Guest Paper Series
For a new paper series, edited by Dr. Tim Sweijs, four guest authors have looked at different aspects of NATO’s Digital Capabilities.
The series is a follow-up of a thought-provoking symposium titled ‘Fit for the Future? Towards a digitally-capable NATO Alliance for the 21st Century’, hosted by HCSS and Microsoft in Brussels on March 10, 2025. This event brought together world class experts, defence planners, military professionals, and strategists who assessed the state of play in C4ISR and digitalisation and discussed how NATO can prepare for the battlefield of the 21st century.
Paper 1 | NATO’s Digital Modernisation: The Case of Cloud Computing
The digital battlefield is already here. From Ukraine to the Middle East, modern warfare is increasingly multi-domain, where legacy weapon systems are enhanced by cutting-edge digital technologies—especially those powered by artificial intelligence. But AI can only function effectively with robust digital infrastructure. Cloud computing is emerging as one of the key enablers in this transformation.
This HCSS guest paper by Antonio Calcara (Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Head of the Geopolitics and Technology Programme at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS)), examines NATO’s efforts to adopt cloud computing as part of its broader digital modernisation agenda. As NATO moves from planning to implementation of its cloud strategy, the paper identifies six key challenges—three military and three industrial—that must be addressed to bridge the gap between ambition and capability.
Paper 2 | How Ukraine’s War is Reshaping C4ISR for the Modern Battlefield
Now in its fourth year, the war in Ukraine is redefining modern warfare. Under conditions of extreme pressure and limited resources, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have undergone a rapid evolution in how they manage and deploy C4ISR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.
This HCSS guest paper by Kateryna Bondar (Fellow at the CSIS Wadhwani AI Center), examines how Ukraine has responded to the strategic and operational demands of full-scale war by building a more agile and adaptive C4ISR framework. Lacking a pre-established strategy and facing severe material constraints, Ukraine has had to innovate in real time. The result: an accelerated cycle of adaptation and learning that offers important lessons for NATO and its allies.
Paper 3 | Appraising the State of Play of C4ISR Infrastructure within NATO: Gaps, Deficiencies and Steps Forward
Despite cutting-edge assets like AWACS, AGS, and Link 16, the Alliance struggles with interoperability gaps, cyber vulnerabilities, and limited multi-domain operations (MDO) readiness. Russia’s advanced electronic warfare capabilities, demonstrated in Ukraine, highlight NATO’s exposure to GPS and tactical data link disruption. Moreover, national modernisation efforts risk deepening fragmentation without alignment to NATO-wide goals.
This HCSS guest paper by Andrea Gilli (Lecturer at the University of St Andrews) and Mauro Gilli (Senior Researcher in Military Technology and International Security at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich) assesses NATO’s C4ISR infrastructure—vital to maintaining operational superiority—as it faces growing challenges from strategic competitors, technological fragmentation, and under investment.
Paper 4 | Command Confrontation: Considering China’s Evolving Command Capabilities and Implications for NATO
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues pursuing ambitions to become a world-class military, the impacts of which will be global. NATO’s future force design and defence planning should be informed by assessments of the trajectory of China’s military power and potential threats that PLA capabilities could present, including to NATO C4ISR systems. For decades Chinese military leaders have dedicated considerable resources and consistent investments to developing command information systems that are comparable to C4ISR, information operations capabilities such as cyber and electronic warfare to target adversary C4ISR.
This new HCSS guest paper by Elsa B Kania. (Adjunct Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security (CNAS)) assesses China’s evolving command capabilities and the implications for NATO.
Capstone Paper | Securing the Digital Backbone: NATO’s Quest for Interoperability in the Age of Emerging Disruptive Technologies
As Europe navigates a rapidly evolving threat landscape, NATO’s digital capabilities are increasingly being tested. A new paper by HCSS Strategic Analysts Hans Horan, Sofia Romansky and Davis Ellison — with contributions from HCSS Assistant Analyst Emma Brooks Genovesi and edited by HCSS Research Director Tim Sweijs — offers a comprehensive blueprint for building a NATO fit for the digital battlefield, focusing on the urgent need to modernise Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) across NATO Europe.
This Capstone paper synthesises key insights from the four expert guest papers commissioned for this project. Together, these papers offer a multifaceted perspective on the challenges NATO faces in adapting to a digital battlespace and provides the foundation for the capstone to both diagnose NATO’s current shortcomings and propose actionable solutions, laying the strategic framework for collective digital capabilities ahead of the 2025 NATO Summit.
These HCSS papers are part of a series related to the “NATO’s digital capabilities” project, established in the run up to the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague. The research was made possible through a financial contribution from Microsoft to The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS). Responsibility for the contents and for the opinions expressed, rests solely with the authors.
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