Incidents in the airspace of NATO member states have increased at an unprecedented rate in recent months. Drones in Poland and fighter jets in Estonia are just the most well-known and recent cases. However, unmanned aircraft have also appeared in Denmark and several times in Romania.
Let's leave aside the controversy over whether Russia is behind this and what it is investigating. Let's ask ourselves what the discussion about securing NATO's eastern flank has revealed about further (potentially) dangerous violations of the allies' airspace.
Drones have changed the face of warfare
Poland and the Baltic states, which are at the forefront of the North Atlantic Alliance, are sounding the alarm because of these incidents. They have demonstrated the practical consequences of how fundamentally the nature of warfare has changed over the past three years.
It is no longer just a matter of trench warfare and shelling strategic Ukrainian cities with expensive missiles, which can be countered by (even more expensive) air defenses.
In addition to missiles, Russia is now sending hundreds of Shahed attack drones and their cheap Gerber replicas, which do not cause as much damage but overload the air defense system. This then becomes unable to reliably intercept ballistic missiles.
The Ukrainians are therefore rushing to develop various solutions to defend themselves against this. At the end of spring, the first videos appeared showing how small FPV drones are neutralizing their larger Russian counterparts.
The evasive West
Drones have gradually become an absolutely decisive factor in warfare. However, the European “elites” only began to respond with concrete measures when they massively violated Polish airspace in September.
The Baltic states found support in Brussels. The European Commission presented a plan for a “wall.” In short, this is a complex network of detection devices and systems capable of quickly neutralizing (primarily) drones heading for the territory of individual countries on NATO's eastern flank. In the newspaper Štandard, we took a closer look at the possible form of the wall. We discussed it.
Brussels, together with the initiators, wants to use funds from the European coffers to finance the wall against drones, which all members of the Union must agree to. The plan therefore quickly met with resistance from countries that are relatively safe from the Russian border.
The reasons given vary. The French president and the German defense minister stated that while drones are important, there are more urgent priorities.
“What we really need are advanced warning systems to better predict threats, we need to deter (Russia) with Europe's ability to strike distant targets, and we need more air defense systems,” said Emmanuel Macron, also mentioning nuclear deterrence. In his opinion, “there is no perfect wall for Europe,” and since it is a three-thousand-kilometer-long border, the project is not entirely feasible.
Boris Pistorius said he also supported defense against unmanned aircraft, but “not through a drone wall.” According to the Brussels website Politico, the plan was also sharply criticized by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz behind closed doors during the negotiations in Copenhagen.
It's about money
At first glance, the arguments of several Western heads of state and government seem justified—the wall does not seem like an indispensable element of defense, but rather a supplementary one. On the other hand, drones are a weapon that currently kills and takes out the most soldiers on the Ukrainian battlefield.
“In the past, NATO's air defense was focused on fast-flying air threats – missiles fired from aircraft, ballistic missiles, guided missiles, hypersonic missiles – but not specifically on drones,” Rafael Loss, a defense expert at the ECFR think tank, told CNN.
Although he believes this is slowly changing, the continent's ability to defend itself against Russian drones is still in its infancy. And shooting down small unmanned aircraft costing several thousand dollars with missiles costing several million dollars (as recently happened in Poland) is completely unprofitable. It follows that a sensible solution must be found.
There are really good reasons for building up a defense against drones, yet the Western members of the Union are hesitant. Obviously for selfish reasons, because the Italians and Greeks have said it for the others too – the defense project should not only concern Eastern Europe. They want something too. And Brussels agrees with them.
The main problem seems to be money, because the project is not cheap. EU Commissioner for Defense and former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius calculated that securing a defense wall for Poland and the Baltic states would cost around one billion euros. At a time when the indebted French, Italians, and Greeks are counting every euro twice, it is obvious that these heads of state and government would like to have a share of the pie, even if Brussels were to pay for the drone wall.
By supplying weapons to Ukraine, promising endless aid, and humiliating evil Russia, they are at least building an image of fearless politicians. In some cases (Macron, Starmer), playing the warmonger offers them a welcome escape from domestic politics.
However, building costly defense mechanisms in Eastern Europe is not such a big win. It turns out that solidarity is only mentioned when it suits the stronger and richer. Currently, the much-praised Western Europe is showing more solidarity with Ukraine than with its own allies.