NATO closes DiBaX 2026 in Latvia after trialling 5G towers as passive drone sensors

TLDR

• NATO's Latvia experiments ended with a live demonstration of nearly 400 drones, passive 5G detection and counter-drone systems.¹
• Admiral Vandier says a drone launched in Lithuania was engaged by a counter-drone system in Latvia; some tests failed.²
• NATO has not released detection performance data for the 5G sensing trials.³

NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT) says it has concluded nearly two weeks of experimentation in Latvia that tested how sensors, networks and counter-drone systems from different nations can work together.¹ ACT describes three complementary activities throughout October: the Digital Backbone eXperimentation (DiBaX26), the Layered Counter-Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Initiative (LCI-X), in its fourth Crucible event of 2026, and Next Generation Targeting.¹ ACT says the closing NATO FUSE demonstration used a scenario of drone swarms, cross-border incursions and simulated electronic warfare, and involved multiple platoons from NATO's Multinational Brigade Latvia and nearly 400 drones.¹ Across the effort, ACT counts more than 30 countries, 100 industry partners and about 500 personnel at three locations.¹ Other outlets give different participant counts: DroneNR says almost 100 defence companies from more than 20 countries, and Defence Blog says more than 60 technology companies.³²

Defence Blog reports that Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, said on 30 October at Ādaži that a drone took off in Lithuania, flew into Latvia and was engaged there by a counter-drone system, as one of several LCI-X trials.² Vandier is quoted as saying: "Even if it didn't work this morning, it has been done this week," and Defence Blog says he acknowledged that some tests failed and that the alliance had accepted that risk.² The Lithuanian Armed Forces, in a statement dated 31 October, say their Land Forces launched unmanned aircraft from Lithuanian territory, integrated Lithuanian reconnaissance and combat unmanned aircraft and coordinated the two countries' airspace, and that data sharing with partners allowed some of the drones to be observed and their movements tracked; the statement does not mention an engagement.⁴

On the detection side, Defence Blog says DiBaX used ordinary 5G cell towers as passive sensors to detect objects moving through their coverage, particularly in cities with dense tower networks.² DroneNR says the DiBaX technology partners included Ericsson, Nokia, Thales, TEKEVER and Dronetag, with LMT Defence as technical integrator.³ DroneNR notes that NATO has not released detection performance data from Latvia, so the approach cannot yet be assessed, and points to a separate Ericsson and AT&T demonstration of tower-based drone tracking in Texas.³

The Jerusalem Post quotes Maj.-Gen. Arnoud Stallmann, NATO's assistant chief of staff for multi-domain capability, as saying the alliance is not advocating a total solution but a layered counter-UAS approach, and that it needs lower-cost intercept options than fighter aircraft or missile interceptors.⁵ It says LCI-X has run through counter-UAS events in Finland and Latvia over the past year.⁵ ACT adds that evidence from this year's trials will inform standards, further trials, certification and possible procurement or investment decisions, and quotes the chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, as expecting next year a sensor-to-shooter chain against drone swarms across several nations' systems, fielded with units on the eastern flank.¹

Why it matters: NATO is moving counter-drone work from single-system tests to cross-border, multi-vendor integration, but the headline engagement is Vandier's account alone and the Lithuanian statement describes observation, tracking and airspace coordination but no engagement, while the 5G passive detection results have no published performance figures, so what is established so far is the scale and design of the trials rather than how well the methods worked.¹²³⁴