With its powerful camera, the French Navy surveillance plane scouring the Baltic Sea zoomed in on a cargo ship plowing the waters below — closer, closer and closer still until the camera operator could make out details on the vessel’s front deck and smoke pouring from its chimney.

The long-range Atlantique 2 aircraft on a new mission for NATO then shifted its high-tech gaze onto another target, and another after that until, after more than five hours on patrol, the plane’s array of sensors had scoped out the bulk of the Baltic — from Germany in the west to Estonia in the northeast, bordering Russia.