NATO’s plan to buy Triton drones: Three cheers, two concerns

Last week at its summit in Turkey, NATO nations announced the planned purchase of several new aircraft, including up to five MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicles. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway will lead the alliance’s procurement of Triton, a high-altitude, long-endurance maritime surveillance aircraft originally developed for the U.S. Navy. Triton is intended to expand NATO’s ISR Force, the alliance-owned fleet of five RQ-4D drones based in Sigonella, Italy which started flying in 2021 and has proven operationally valuable and cost effective since then.

The Triton announcement is welcome news, fulfilling a recommendation we made in a study earlier this year. We think the plan deserves three cheers: one tactical, one operational, and one strategic. Being think tankers, though, and naval intelligence officers to boot, our cheeriness has limits. Two aspects of the plan give us pause.

First, cheer the tactical benefit. Acquiring Triton will allow NATO to surveil targets more thoroughly because the aircraft carries sensors that NATO’s existing RQ-4Ds do not. The RQ-4D has both the synthetic aperture radar and moving target indicator, two powerful systems it has used to good effect. However, it cannot collect electro-optical and infrared imagery or signals intelligence. Triton offers those capabilities, along with radar, on an airframe reinforced for maritime conditions.

The result is a superb ship finder well suited to, for example, track Russia’s shadow fleet of smuggling vessels. Triton’s sensors give it different ways to beat the shadow fleet’s deception tactics, which include ship-to-ship transfers, spoofing locational data and automatic identification system blackouts. It is hard for ships to hide from an aircraft that can see so many of their physical and electronic signatures.

Moving to operational gain, fielding Triton will enable NATO to maintain more persistent surveillance in key areas because the alliance will have more aircraft at its disposal and can base them in different places. The four countries leading the Triton procurement will likely want the aircraft based in or near their territory for political reasons. Thankfully, that also makes sense operationally.

If based at Satakunta Air Base (Finland) and Andøya Air Station (Norway), for example, Triton could reach — in two hours or less — key targets around the Baltic Sea, Eastern European border, High North and the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap. These are critical places to watch for Russian provocations. With northern-based Tritons covering these areas, Sigonella-based RQ-4Ds could monitor places closer to Italy, using the flight time saved from not transiting so far north to cover more targets or spend more time on each target. This strengthened surveillance posture will signal to Russia that wrongdoing will be detected, deterring it from acting aggressively in the first place.

Third is the strategic benefit, which relates to the alliance’s political cohesion. Buying Triton will help NATO reduce its reliance on U.S. surveillance capabilities. American and alliance leaders have long desired that outcome, but progress has been underwhelming. With the open pressure from President Donald Trump on the alliance, unprecedented urgency now exists for burden shifting within NATO. 

NATO’s Triton procurement shows the United States that the alliance is making progress. NATO should not rely on member-state contributions, whether from the United States or other nations, for all its surveillance. Those contributions might not always come when needed. The alliance-owned aircraft of NATO’s ISR Force, bolstered with new Tritons, provides NATO with essential flexibility and autonomy. That meshes with the Trump administration’s goals but, to be clear, it is also a longstanding U.S. and NATO objective.

Now about those concerns. Two stand out to us.

The first is about people — specifically the military personnel required to fly, upkeep and analyze the data collected by surveillance drones. In recent years, NATO’s ISR Force in Sigonella was manned at about 60 percent of its authorized strength of 600 people because member states did not send enough support. With too few people, and some of them always in training, the force averaged only one flight per week, far below the four to six flights it could perform if fully manned.

NATO has not released full details about Triton, but if the manning plan is anything similar, then personnel shortfalls could limit Triton’s contributions. As NATO nations prepare to invest in aircraft, they must also prepare to provide the necessary people.

The second concern is about what comes next. Our study found that NATO’s ISR Force needed at least 15 aircraft to cover Europe’s key areas, and that a mix of high-altitude and medium-altitude drones offered the best balance across likely missions. The medium-altitude MQ-9B, for example, offers distinctive capabilities especially useful in wartime, including missile strikes, air-launched effects and short takeoff and landing.

Buying five Tritons, thus giving NATO’s ISR Force 10 total aircraft, is a huge step, but it alone will not meet all NATO’s airborne surveillance needs. In our view, the alliance should follow the Triton purchase with an equally sized buy of medium-altitude drones, to be announced at the next NATO summit. This follow-on purchase will further strengthen NATO’s surveillance posture in peacetime while improving its ability to target enemy forces in wartime.

Although the Triton decision is encouraging, NATO ISR Force’s history stretching back to 1992 is littered with hopeful plans crushed by political disputes and broken promises. Several factors in place with Triton should help avoid that fate, including agreement from the outset about U.S.-European industrial workshare, rising NATO defense spending and Triton’s demonstrated value during Operation Epic Fury against Iran.

Our simple advice for the managers of the Triton purchase is to work fast. Everything might seem politically favorable now, but windows of opportunity to acquire NATO surveillance aircraft have closed suddenly in the past. Best to move quickly so the alliance gets the aircraft it needs.