NATO Routed Military Traffic Over Latvia's Commercial 5G in Two-Week Drill

NATO has for the first time carried secure troop communications over an allied nation's commercial 5G network during a two-week field experiment in Latvia that ended October 30. The Digital Backbone eXperimentation, or DiBaX, ran at the Ādaži Military Base near Riga from October 19 to 30 and drew more than 60 technology companies alongside allied forces.

The trial reserved a private, secured slice of the host country's civilian 5G network for military command and data traffic. The approach would let arriving units connect from their first day in a country, before their own communications infrastructure reaches them. Latvia has now hosted the event for the fifth consecutive year.

Latvian operator LMT acted as technical integrator through its defence arm. Salvis Skladovs, director of LMT Defence, said no NATO country can yet detect flying objects using mobile infrastructure built from off-the-shelf parts. The concept is established, he said, and "the discussion is about who will deploy it first." LMT is developing 5G and 6G drone detection together with Thales Italia.

What did the three experiments test?

DiBaX examined three ways to keep forces connected under battlefield conditions:

• Network slicing. A secured section of a host nation's commercial 5G network served arriving forces before their own equipment was deployed.
• Automatic link switching. Traffic moved between paths when one was jammed, spanning radio frequencies, satellite links including 5G direct-to-device, and troposcatter, which bounces signals off the lower atmosphere to reach beyond the horizon.
• Towers as sensors. Standard 5G towers worked as passive sensors tracking objects moving through their coverage, an effect strongest in cities with dense tower networks.

At Ādaži, NATO also demonstrated for the first time the coordinated operation of drone swarms using 5G, artificial intelligence and digital data-sharing systems. Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, said the new technologies make it possible to integrate information and make faster decisions on the battlefield. Latvian Army Commander Kaspars Pudāns stressed that these developments should now move into real-world operations rather than remain confined to testing.

Which systems were linked?

The alliance connected systems designed in isolation from each other. Vandier said engineers linked a Maven targeting system to a national military system within hours using agentic AI, software that carries out multistep tasks on its own. He did not identify the nation involved. NATO bought its own version of Palantir's Maven Smart System in 2025 to speed commanders' decisions.

In a cross-border counter-drone test, a drone took off in Lithuania, flew into Latvia and was engaged there, Vandier said. The drill formed part of NATO's Layered Counter-UAS Initiative, which examines how sensors and weapons from different nations and firms act as one defense. Vandier acknowledged that some tests failed and said the alliance accepted that risk.

NATO built the scenarios around incidents below the threshold of its Article 5 mutual-defense clause, including drone intrusions and damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea. The region has faced persistent satellite-navigation and radio jamming plus repeated drone incursions in recent months, giving the resilience work operational weight.

Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, the United States, Canada and Finland took part, with Ericsson, Nokia, Thales and Portuguese drone maker TEKEVER among the participating firms. The closing NATO FUSE showcase on October 30 was attended by NATO's top military leadership.

What comes next?

Vandier said the hardest step still lies ahead. "The next challenge, and it's the most difficult, is adoption," he said. European Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis announced two pilot European Drone Technology Hubs, one in Latvia and one in the Netherlands, set to open in 2027 to speed drone and counter-drone development together with NATO.