At the 2026 NATO Summit, Allied Command Transformation will bring a clear message: NATO’s operational advantage depends on its ability to design, integrate and deliver operational effects faster and at scale.
The character of warfare is changing rapidly. Autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, data exploitation, commercial space services, uncrewed platforms and scalable capability at lower cost are reshaping how military advantage is gained and sustained. For NATO, the challenge is no longer simply finding new technology. The challenge is turning useful innovation into interoperable capability fast enough to meet real operational needs.
That is where Allied Command Transformation (ACT) plays a central role.
ACT helps the Alliance connect foresight, experimentation and innovation with practical military outcomes. It works with Allies, NATO commands, industry, academia and other partners to test what is available, validate what works, shape interoperable approaches and provide Nations with the evidence needed to support smarter investment choices and advance a culture focused on speed, scale and operational relevance.
Delivering Warfighting Advantage at Scale
At the Summit, ACT will showcase how NATO can strengthen its operational advantage by speeding up and scaling the design, development and deployment of capabilities needed to overcome capability gaps and achieve desirable operational effects.
ACT helps the Alliance turn innovation into interoperable capability, accelerate adoption and drive continuous adaptation to ensure warfighting advantage. This includes moving from ideas to capabilities, turning capabilities into operational effects and consequently to credible deterrence and defence. For the Alliance, moving quickly is essential, but speed alone is not enough. Rapid adoption without interoperability can create fragmentation. Interoperability without rapid adaption can create stagnation. NATO needs both: the ability to move faster and the ability to move together.
ACT’s work is focused on that balance: Accelerating adoption while ensuring new capabilities can be integrated, tested and scaled across the Alliance.
That approach is also reflected in ACT’s Beacon Projects, which highlight priority efforts where experimentation, operational need and capability development are being connected in practical ways.
Three Ways ACT Is Building Operational Advantage
At the Summit, this narrative will be reflected through three connected areas of focus:
- FLE and FLEX: ACT is helping Allies identify credible and immediately available options to increase force lethality before they commit to long-term investment decisions. Force Lethality Enhancement, or FLE, examines how required military effects could be delivered through different combinations of people, platforms and emerging technologies. Its expanded follow-on effort, Force Lethality Enhancement eXtended, or FLEX, broadens that work across a wider set of capability challenges. A first look at the NATO Industry Front Door tool, supports this effort by providing a centralized portal for industry opportunities and procurement pathways across NATO entities. ACT is also supporting the work behind the portal by helping feed relevant information into that environment. Together, these efforts help Allies move more confidently from capability need to credible capability choice.
- The expanding of Task Force X: Task Force X, including Task Force X-Baltic and Task Force X-Arctic, two of ACT’s Beacon Projects, shows how experimentation can become a repeatable model for operational adoption. What began in the Baltic Sea as a focused effort to accelerate the use of uncrewed maritime systems has expanded across regions and operational domains. That evolution is now visible in Task Force X – Central Mediterranean, underway on NATO’s Southern Flank. It is the first Task Force X initiative led by an Ally that spans all five operational domains (land, maritime, air, cyber, and space) simultaneously. Across these initiatives, the model remains consistent: connect commercially available technology to operational problems, test it alongside existing forces, integrate it through shared data environments and scale what works across different regions.
- Using SINBAD and MAINSAIL to improve awareness and decision-making: NATO can improve situational awareness from seabed to space, and support better informed decisions through data, commercial services and advanced analytics. SINBAD, also one of ACT’s 2026 Beacon Projects, uses commercial space-based monitoring and analytics to help assess visible change across areas of interest. MAINSAIL brings together data from multiple sources to support a deeper understanding of maritime activity and potential threats to critical undersea infrastructure. Together, these efforts demonstrate how data-enabled awareness can support faster, better-informed decisions.
From Innovation to Integration
These three areas are different in focus, but they point to the same larger transformation challenge.
NATO does not deter through innovation in isolation. It deters through capabilities that can be adopted, integrated, deployed and used by Allies together. That requires more than promising technology. It requires common approaches, realistic testing, operational feedback, shared standards and the discipline to scale what works.
This is the practical role ACT brings to NATO’s transformation. The command helps the Alliance move from foresight to experimentation, from experimentation to evidence, and from evidence to decisions that can shape future capabilities. It also helps ensure that rapid adoption remains connected to interoperability, so that new systems and approaches strengthen the Alliance rather than divide it into separate national solutions.
The pace of modern conflict continues to compress decision cycles. Allies must be able to learn faster, adapt faster and integrate faster than potential adversaries. They must also ensure that increased defence investment translates into usable military effect, not only long-term ambition.
Delivering Advantage at Speed and Scale
The 2026 NATO Summit provides an opportunity to show how transformation is becoming more practical, more operational and more closely connected to the needs of deterrence and defence.
Together, these efforts support one objective: building operational advantage.