The geopolitical turbulence of the past four years has forced a new approach on civil-military cooperation. Global Airspace Radar sat down with Major General Karsten Stoye, Head of the Civil-Military Cooperation Division (CMC) at EUROCONTROL in Brussels on why the ATM community cannot afford to look away.
A transversal mission under pressure
CMC at EUROCONTROL operates across airspace management, CNS interoperability, new entrants and crisis response. “Airspace management and the multiple operational aspects required to support military operations has an increased focus with flexible, dynamic and modular solutions,” explains Major General Stoye. Current activities extend to the integration of remotely piloted aircraft systems across multiple altitude bands. Alongside today’s challenges, the arrival of over 750 new fighter aircraft F-35s expected in the next five to ten years and new weapons systems call for extended airspace use.
Four years of a new normal
“We see a new normal,” says Major General Stoye, reflecting on the global geopolitical situation. “We have 20% less airspace available for commercial traffic and additional training areas.” This leads to layered complexity, where commercial traffic, live military exercises and operational mission flights all compete for the same constrained airspace.
The conflict in the Middle East has added another dimension, pushing commercial flows into narrow corridors through Türkiye and Georgia, while US Air Force bombers, tankers and support aircraft route through European airspace towards the conflict zone.
A learning curve
A key lesson since the start of the war in Ukraine has been the need to improve coordination. When nations began building military airspace and corridors, they did so in isolation. CMC responded with guidelines and recommendations for civil-military ATM cooperation in European pre-crisis and crisis response situations.
Those guidelines are tested in practice: a two-day tabletop exercise is planned for October 2026 in Riga – the first of its kind in the European framework – bringing together civil ANSPs, airlines, military authorities, NATO and the European Defence Agency. Major General Stoye says this may expose gaps that most civil stakeholders do not yet know exist. The European Aviation Crisis Coordination Cell (EACCC), co-led by EUROCONTROL and the European Commission, will anchor the event.
The exercise confronts a question that very few stakeholders, including many ANSP CEOs, have seriously considered: what is the national process for transferring sovereign airspace to a NATO commander in a crisis? “When I asked the stakeholders here at EUROCONTROL and NATO what the process is in a certain nation, they normally did not know,” says Major General Stoye. “That’s why we’re doing this exercise.”
Towards a military Schengen
The EU’s Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 and its accompanying Military Mobility Package are reshaping the regulatory environment. The ambition is a single permission procedure for all 27 EU nations and a maximum three-day diplomatic clearance process, reduced from the current norm of between three days and three weeks depending on cargo and country. Several nations have already moved to a one-day approval. Major General Stoye describes it as a “military Schengen.“
That architecture demands dual-use thinking. Sharing infrastructure or systems – a single installation serving both civil and military needs with appropriate confidentiality filters – saves money, reduces spectrum congestion and builds resilience. But it also requires a cultural shift. “Commercial and military aviation need to cooperate much more in the future than we have seen so far,” states Major General Stoye. Many have been asking for exactly this for decades; the difference now is that security pressure is making it happen.
No stakeholder stands apart
The pace is fast. The European air exercise “Air Defender 27” is planned for May next year. Major General Stoye is direct about what the ATM community needs to internalise. “Military implications need to be understood from the outset of all developments.” This means dual-use design from the first line of a specification, military voices in every significant initiative and civil planners who no longer treat military requirements as someone else’s problem.
Mark your diary: EUROCONTROL Civil-Military Forum on 9 June in Brussels
The next dedicated event is the EUROCONTROL Civil-Military ATM Cooperation Forum on 9 June in Brussels, which brings together policymakers, ANSPs, airlines, regulators and international organisations, with participation available both on-site and virtually.
Major General Stoye stresses that “the future of European ATM must be organised together”. Given the geopolitical situation, there is no time to lose.
