Situational Awareness in the Third Nuclear Age

How do the defining features of the third nuclear age shape requirements for strategic situational awareness? As states navigate contemporary escalation dynamics, they increasingly prioritize situational awareness to adapt to evolving technology and geopolitical conditions. This is especially true for small states that employ it in the pursuit of their alliance commitments. However, existing definitions of “situational awareness” are conceptually inconsistent. Because situational awareness often draws on sensitive security information, actors treat it as a “black box” in public discourse and scholarship. I argue that recent technostrategic developments shed light on this black box, offering important insights for situational awareness. In this article, I develop an analytical framework of situational awareness for states operating in military security environments. I model it as a process of observation, interpretation, and operationalization. Drawing on open-source evidence and elite interviews from a Norwegian case study, I conduct a plausibility probe to evaluate my framework. My proposed framework accurately explains the requirements for situational awareness, showing how it has adapted to the third nuclear age by emphasizing digital data developments, hybrid threats, and alliance engagement. More broadly, this article lays the groundwork for future empirical investigations seeking to understand evolving threat environments.