Welcome to the “Persistent Airfield Denial” NATO Innovation Challenge (Innovation Challenge 2026-2), organized by Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in collaboration with JATEC (Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre).
Effective defence against air threats cannot rely solely on intercepting missiles, glide-bombs, and other stand-off weapons in flight; it should also focus on denying the adversary the ability to generate sorties by targeting the airfields and support infrastructure from which those attacks originate.
If those airfields and support infrastructure can be persistently denied, the adversary’s air campaign can be disrupted at its source.
Current options (manned strike aviation, long-range ground fires, and single-unit loitering munitions)
have shown limited effectiveness against defended airfields because they often lack the mass effect, persistence, and EW resilience needed to suppress multiple aim points in contested conditions.
This is why this challenge focuses on identifying, accelerating, and validating solutions that can deliver persistent denial of enemy airfield operations through autonomous or operator-directed engagement of aircraft, runways, fuel and munitions storage, and ground support infrastructure, so the adversary cannot sustainably conduct air operations from targeted airfields.
The challenge is technology-agnostic: any architecture may be proposed (including uncrewed aerial systems, autonomous/semi-autonomous munitions and loitering systems, swarming/mass-effect approaches, alternative delivery mechanisms, or hybrid concepts), provided it achieves the required operational effect and can operate in GPS-denied, EW-contested environments, day/night, and all weather/seasons, with a credible path to rapid fielding.
Key Requirements
Participants must demonstrate how their solution can contribute to the primary effect: persistent denial of enemy airfield operations.
At minimum, submissions should show a credible ability to:
- Reach and engage targets at operationally relevant ranges (including deep in contested airspace)
- Sustain engagement over time (not a one-off strike)
- Operate without continuous human control in EW-contested/GPS-denied conditions
- Deliver sufficient mass and precision to suppress multiple aim points across an airfield
- Operate day/night, all weather, all seasons
See RFIP for more details
Event Timeline:
- Submission Deadline: 20 July 2026 (5PM Eastern Time, Norfolk, VA, USA)
- Finalists Announced: 11 August 2026
- Pitch Day: 3 September 2026, Warsaw, Poland (location/date to be confirmed)
Selected finalists will present their solutions to a panel of NATO and Ukrainian experts, national representatives, operational users and observers.
Why Participate?
HQ SACT offers participants an opportunity to gain awareness about the particularities of NATO’s innovation challenges. It will be an opportunity to engage with HQ SACT, SHAPE and other participants within a framework of a community of interest focused on the development of innovative solutions based on new technologies in support of the NATO Innovation Process.
In short:
- Gain visibility within the NATO Innovation Network
- Contribute to cutting-edge operational needs for NATO
- Engage with NATO’s Innovation Branch, Ukrainian experts, Centre of Excellence and NATO nations SMEs
After the challenge, HQ SACT also plans to provide monetary awards upon completion of a demonstration of the winning solution(s) during an HQ SACT event.
Submission requirements are detailed in the RFIP.