Baltic Air Policing

I love the food in Riga.

But, I mean, just today NATO Baltic Air Policing was activated because-

Yep

...

That was Cana- those were Canadians and other countries that were helping us.

Mm-hmm.

And then we just had the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission just get activated today.

That's multiple countries.

NATO has started trying to close some of those gaps, and the most substantial change that we've seen came back in July.

At the Ankara summit, the alliance upgraded its Baltic Air Policing operation into an actual air defense mission, giving pilots more authority to engage through NATO's military chain of command, rather than having them wait for approval from whichever capital governs their airspace.

Estonia's then-Defense Minister Hanno Pevko weighed in that the Combined Air Operations Center would now have the ability to authorize engagements in most cases unless a country has specifically imposed their own restrictions.

That is genuinely a big step forward for the alliance, and it's worth treating it as such.