No military has yet learned how to face the danger of drones

Through the night of September 9, Polish airspace was invaded. Flying from Ukraine and Belarus, between nineteen and twenty-three Russian drones drifted westward into Polish— and, therefore, NATO—airspace. Four of them were destroyed. The rest crossed EU and NATO borders before vanishing from radar. At least several flew deep into Polish airspace, having been found some 200 kilometres from Poland’s border with neighbouring Belarus. Though thankfully there are no casualties to lament—and the sole destruction caused, that of a house, was apparently caused by one of the missiles fired by Polish aircraft in an attempt to target one of the invading drones—what the episode reveals is how woefully unprepared Europe is for the drone century.

While Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have come to revolutionise the battlefield, particularly since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the threat of drones is hardly new to nations close to the conflict. Romania itself has often seen Iranian Shahed drones —which Russia has adopted into service under the name “Geran” — strike Ukrainian targets right across the border. Just a week ago, these deadly machines also crossed into the nation’s airspace, though Bucharest decided against shooting them down and they later crossed back into Ukraine. Now, however, we’re learning that the depths of Europe are eerily porous to inexpensive, plentiful, and proliferating airborne weapons. The conventional threat is scary enough and should lead to immediate and focused action. And yet, not only states can weaponize drones and explore Europe’s vulnerabilities. Terrorists and criminals could as well.

The war in Ukraine has come to prove how cheap and effective UAVs can be. Geran-2s, constructed for between $20,000 and $50,000 each (€17,000 to €43,000), are fired in waves. Interception comes at the price of Patriot or NASAMS missiles costing twenty times as much: €500,000 to €4 million per shot. The math is catastrophic: In Ukraine, Russia has bled Ukraine by having the West spend a fortune shooting into the air. The asymmetry is the very reason of the drone. For the price of a sports car, you target an oil refinery, a power station, or a commercial airliner.

The Ukrainians themselves have shown what the tool is capable of. This year alone, they have launched attacks on at least a dozen Russian oil refineries deep within enemy lines. These are not just symbolic targets but key nodes of the Russian economy. Moscow’s air defences — some of the world’s densest — were no impediment. If even Russia, a country that produces over half the world’s entire output of air defences and enjoys some of the technologically most capable in the world can’t adequately protect against cheap Ukrainian drones, it should not surprise us that NATO’s performance, too, was less than stellar over Poland.

In fact, no military has yet learned how to efficiently face the danger of UAVs. The Ukrainians haven’t, the Russians haven’t, and neither have the chronically underfunded European militaries. In June, Kiev surprised with its “Operation Spiderweb”, during which it used small, truck-transported drones to hit and destroy numerous Russian strategic bombers. The strike was certainly a major Ukrainian success—that it will be patiently studied by many armies around the world seems to be beyond doubt. But what if it is also emulated by malignant actors, namely against targets in Europe? Suppose a group of terrorists hijack commercial quadcopters — a drone made with four rotors — packed with explosives and fly them into civilian aircraft on a runway at Frankfurt, Heathrow, or Schiphol. Suppose they flew them into a nuclear plant, or just into a crowd at a festival. As things stand, such horrors are technically feasible. The technology is off-the-shelf. A €1,000 DJI drone purchased over the internet, equipped with raw explosives, can become a deadly missile. Terrorists once caused mayhem by taking over airplanes or leaving bombs inside trains. Consider what a determined fanatic could do with drones.

Europe is most exposed because it has unarmed itself into lethargy. Military budgets decreased for decades on the presupposition that America’s umbrella would be enough. Few EU nations have experienced combat in contested airspaces. Civilian infrastructure is hardly hardened. Even limited drone detection — radar, acoustics sensors, jamming equipment — is patchy at best, deployed around some airports and VIP sites. In most capitals, ways of deflecting a drone attack would likely need to be improvised ad hoc.

The United States at least recognises the need: The Pentagon’s Joint Counter-Small UAS Office has spent billions on directed-energy weapons, jammers, and interceptors. Israel, battle-hardened, uses sophisticated lasers and electronic warfare to deflect swarms. China uses truck-mounted microwave cannons. While none of these methods is fully effective, they are still steps in the right direction. Meanwhile, there is no European-wide drone defence strategy and no collective research and development strategy.

The drone is not just another weapon system. It is a more fundamental shift in war: From the expensive to the cheap, from the professional to the improviser, from the state arsenal to the garage workshop. It is the Kalashnikov of the skies, and as with the Kalashnikov, it will likely diffuse until every warlord, gang, and terror network has access to it. Indeed, many criminal groups, including Mexican and Colombian cartels, are known to have used the Ukrainian battlefield to learn how to master these machines. We should not fool ourselves with the thought that these perils will only affect others.

The incursion into Poland should not be dismissed as a glitch. It is, quite literally, a warning shot. If four out of twenty drones were destroyed, that leaves sixteen crossing EU airspace unchecked. Europe must cease to believe the drone is merely a Ukrainian or Middle Eastern phenomenon. It is already here, and the dangers go well beyond the — thankfully — still unlikely scenario of a large-scale conventional conflict with state actors.

There should be immediate action to secure Europe’s skies from these machines: A crash programme for EU-wide counter-drone defences, radar, laser, and jammer investments and political will to see drone swarms as a threat as real as tanks.