International| Fighting tech
NATO’s race against Russia to rearm
The alliance has three to four years to adopt AI and new tech
A Turkish F16 fighting jet flies over naval ships during an annual NATO naval exercise that also taking part Greek forces, on Turkey's western coast on the Mediterranean.
Photograph: AP
AS A YOUNG naval fighter pilot operating from a French carrier during the Kosovo war in 1999, Lieutenant Pierre Vandier would pore over surveillance photographs developed from celluloid film. Now an admiral, the French officer is NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, one of the alliance’s two most senior commanders. His job is to work out, among other things, how to use artificial intelligence and human skill to make sense of the mass of surveillance imagery and data that the alliance collects. He is, in effect, in charge of bringing NATO into the 21st century.