The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) has commenced the activities of the "Crossed Swords 2026" exercise in Tallinn, Estonia, with the participation of more than 250 experts from more than 40 countries. The exercise aims to enhance cyber operation planning skills and their synchronization with field military movements.
Integrating AI into Operations
This year represents a qualitative shift in the nature of the training, as an entire track has been dedicated to AI Agents. Participants train on building, deploying, and evaluating these agents and working alongside them in an operational environment. For the first time in the history of the exercise, the OpenAI Daybreak platform dedicated to cyber defense is being used, alongside locally hosted AI models.
Why Does This News Matter?
The exercise director, Joseph Kostylansky, explained that the greatest operational challenge is "synchronization"; cyber effects must achieve their objectives with a temporal precision measured in minutes to support special military operations. He noted that introducing AI into the operational loop from both sides (offensive and defensive) makes this task more complex, requiring participants to be trained on harnessing the power of AI while maintaining the human oversight necessary for the success of multi-domain missions.
Scope of the Exercise and Participants
The exercise brings together national cyber forces, threat hunters, digital forensics experts, as well as special operations forces. The exercise also focuses on protecting critical infrastructure by involving civilian partners from the industrial and academic sectors and non-governmental organizations, with the participation of prominent technology institutions such as Bitdefender, ESET, Mandiant, and Elastic.
The exercise has seen significant growth in the scale of participation since its launch as a simple workshop in 2014, with the number of participants doubling since 2022, reflecting the increasing importance of training on cyber operations integrated into modern military doctrine.