Kestrel-Astria Treaty Organization
 "Sword & Shield" logo as of August 16th, 2025 | |
| Abbreviation | KATO |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Neo Orzel |
| Formation | 12 April 2022 |
| Type | Military alliance |
| Headquarters | Eclipse Development Zone |
| Membership | Treaty signed on April 12th, 2022 by:
 Ludasia |
Secretary General | March |
| Secessions |  Kinetic Assault Initiative - Signed: April 12th, 2022 |
Overview
The Kestrel-Astria Treaty Organization (often shortened to "KATO") is the joint pact between some former New Ares Treaty Organization member states and some former Petrograd Pact member states.
After the collapse of Neo Orzel, the Cerulean Taskforce and the Nationalist Republic of Kalestania had lost contact for the most part. However, most previous members of the New Ares Treaty Organization still were good friends and talked often. A Discord server previously existed as far back as July 2021 for old-heads within the New Ares Treaty Organization + International Weapons Corporation as a general friend space after World War III.
Around December 24th, 2021, several old NATO members began to join the Corn Flake Crew (CFC) server after it had installed ACF-3, for non-clan related reasons. Over the next month, these events escalated, and boiled over around January 24th, 2022; as the catalysts for the CFC Conflict (the harassment of Ghost Company members, alongside Omegatrion renaming himself to "[AEF] Strayed" as a joke) led to the sudden influx of faction activity on the server, which led to more people from that friend circle joining in for the conflict.
The previously mentioned Discord server saw increased activity during the CFC Conflict, which drew NATO and IW closer together. Sergei, the leader of the Nationalist Republic of Kalestania, was invited to the Discord around late-January 2022, reuniting the two founding Neo Orzel states once again. On April 8th, 2022, after an internal info-security breach, it was discussed splitting off the previously non-Garry's Mod section and the Garry's Mod section into two servers, alongside formally creating an alliance.
The acronym "KATO" was chosen both as a reference to RasNotty - a YouTube channel that was a part of the internal friend group humor - and because of how similarly it sounded to NATO, the previous alliance most member states were in. It was later expanded to "Kestrel-Astria" as a backronym - Kestrel had little meaning at the time, but Astria was the name of Independent Karelian Republic's home server. All founding member states agreed to the alliance by April 12th, 2022.