Special Report: NATO practises collective cyber defence during Cyber Coalition 2025

Exercise ‘Cyber Coalition 2025' took place at CR14 in Tallinn, Estonia, between 28 November and 4 December. (SHAPE)

NATO Exercise ‘Cyber Coalition 2025' was executed at Cyber Range 14 (CR14) in Tallinn, Estonia, from 28 November to 4 December to test alliance members' and partners' ability to protect networks and critical national infrastructure (CNI) from cyber attacks. CR14 is the only NATO-accredited cyber centre, to the level of NATO Secret.

Governed by the NATO Military Committee and led by Supreme Allied Command Transformation (ACT), the exercise involved over 1,300 distributed participants, including around 200 in Tallinn, from 29 NATO and seven partner countries, the European Union (EU), industry, and academia. The participating partner countries were Austria, Georgia, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and Ukraine, with Armenia as an observer, making it eligible to participate in ‘Cyber Coalition 2026'. The only NATO countries that did not participate were Greece, Luxembourg, and Montenegro.

The exercise audience included NATO's Cyber and Digital Transformation Division, the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps Italy's Cyberspace Operations Centre, Joint Force Command (JFC) Naples, JFC Brunssum, JFC Norfolk, the Northern European Command and Control Information System Service Support Centre, Allied Land Command (LANDCOM), Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM), NATO Multinational Brigades, and US European Command (USEUCOM).

Exercise ‘Cyber Coalition 2025' was the first time the 32 NATO allies' Virtual Cyber Incident Support Capability (VCISC) launched at the alliance's 2023 Vilnius summit practised as part of a larger exercise.