Eight NATO allies announced plans this week to combine their national defense satellites into a single network.
The Hybrid Alliance Layered Operations in Space constellation—or HALO, for short—aims to integrate sovereign surveillance and communications capabilities from Denmark, Canada, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and the Netherlands. In an era of heightened sovereignty concerns, the announcement stands out as a unique pathway to international cooperation, without sacrificing local capabilities.
Common ground: European space capabilities have long been caught in the push-and-pull between national sovereignty efforts and pan-European projects. European nations have historically been willing to combine forces on civil and commercial projects, but when it comes to defense, sovereignty often takes precedence.
The situation has been great for the space industry, because funding standalone national constellations increases the pool of potential opportunities, compared with supplying one regional defense buyer. But these national efforts have led to a patchwork of smaller constellations that don’t speak with one another, and often deliver subscaled capabilities.
HALO offers a compromise.
Under the proposal, each contributing nation would maintain control and ownership over its sovereign constellation, but the coalition would ensure these systems are interoperable—creating a de facto mega-constellation that can provide the benefits of scale.
“This new model will be particularly helpful for high-speed communications, intelligence and missile tracking, overcoming the cost, the time, and coverage limitations of single-nation satellite fleets,” said Radmila Shekerinska, the NATO deputy secretary-general, at the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum in Ankara, Turkey.
The gang’s all here: While the announcement didn’t go into specifics on what HALO will look like, together the eight nations have a lot to offer the potential constellation.
- Germany operates eight to ten defense sats, mostly focused on recon and surveillance, but the country has announced plans to build a comms and recon constellation of up to 1,200 sats by 2030.
- Turkey operates at least ten satellites in total, including EO and comms sats, with both constellations supporting the country’s defense.
- Finland launched its third dedicated military satellite—an ICEYE SAR sat—this week.
- Canada has one dedicated military sat—called Sapphire—but utilizes a range of public-private partnerships for other capabilities.
- The Netherlands launched its first experimental military sat in 2021, and has since signed a contract for ICEYE to build four SAR sats to add to the country’s growing constellation.
- Denmark and Sweden launched a joint defense satellite in 2025.
- Sweden also launched its first sovereign military recon sat in May.
- Norway has three military satellites in its arsenal including a research sat, and two radar detecting sats in partnership with the Netherlands. The country also relies on public-private partnerships, which fly defense-focused payloads on two broadband sats operated by state-run Space Norway, and three EO sats built by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.
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