A NATO counter-drone exercise in the Netherlands this past spring offered a glimpse of what military leaders increasingly view as one of the most pressing challenges in modern warfare: how to manage crowded, contested airspace filled with drones, sensors and counter-drone systems operated by multiple organizations and nations. The exercise, known as Technical Interoperability Exercise 2026 (TIE26), brought together roughly 300 participants, more than 60 systems, and dozens of command-and-control applications to test whether counter-drone technologies from different countries and companies could work together in a common operational environment. Among the participants was Airwayz, a defense technology company focused on low-altitude airspace governance. During the exercise, the company's OVERWATCH command-and-control platform served as the lead command-and-control system for Team BRAVO and received NATO certification under the alliance's SAPIENT interoperability framework, according to information released following the exercise. For Airwayz Executive Chair Yaron Rosen, a retired Israeli Air Force brigadier general and former chief of the IDF cyber staff, the significance of the exercise extends far beyond technical testing. “We are entering a world where autonomous systems are becoming part of everyday operations,” Rosen told Military.com. “The next decade or two will be about synchronizing human and autonomous activity in the physical world.”