Here come the drones: how can Europe “keep calm and carry on”?

The celebrated British World War II poster “Keep Calm And Carry On” has gone through a hundred or more adaptations during its nine decades of existence; but in its original incarnation it can still be seen on many an office wall today. That is because its advice on how to cope with a crisis is not just timely, but almost eternal. Yet “keeping calm and carrying on” is precisely what EU leaders are finding it difficult to do at the moment as they are confronted with a range of drone incursions into their territorial airspace, repeatedly and in large numbers and impacting a number of countries at more or less the same time. Some of the drones seem to convey a clear political message, as with the 21 Russian drones entering Polish airspace from Belarus in early September and flying as far as 200km inland. So many at the same time could hardly be ascribed to an accident as with a rogue drone malfunctioning or being driven off course by jamming or interception – even if the 21 drones were unarmed. A deliberate Russian provocation, despite the Kremlin’s usual denials, seemed a safe conclusion to reach. Other drones flying over civilian and military airfields in Denmark, Norway and the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein in recent days were more mysterious. There was suspicion that a Benin-registered vessel used by Russia as part of its shadow fleet of oil tankers was involved in the launch of some of the drones as it had skirted the coast of Denmark on its way across the Baltic. The tanker, the Boracay, was stopped by the French Navy and its Chinese captain arrested for not having proper registration and maritime safety certificates and failing to heed instructions from the French coast guard. To date, however, its involvement in drone launches has not yet been established. Yet what is worrying for Europe’s leaders is the way that even a few drone flights can shut down busy international airports in Copenhagen, Oslo and Warsaw for hours with hundreds of flights cancelled and thousands of passengers stranded; or force Poland to close its entire airspace for 12 hours or Denmark to ban normal commercial drone operations in its airspace for an entire week before the EU Council Summit in Copenhagen. How indeed in an increasingly cluttered airspace can national air traffic control systems distinguish between legitimate and legally operating drones and the hostile ones gathering intelligence or being used to provoke chaos and disruption? Norway too suffered disruption at some of its regional airports, such as Bardufoss, which was also forced to close, and Munich airport had to shut down for several hours on two consecutive days with scores of flights cancelled or diverted and over 10,000 passengers affected. The drone threat to airports is not new, of course. Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom had to shut down for two days in 2018 when a drone was repeatedly spotted near the runway, but despite a lengthy police investigation no culprit was ever identified. Germany, Belgium and the UK have also reported drones flying close to military airbases and critical infrastructure during the past two months. The drone incursions are a classic example of hybrid warfare: easy and cheap to organise, easy to put a drone in close proximity to its target, easy to deny or cover one’s tracks by using proxy groups, and causing maximum disruption for minimum planning and expenditure. Thus, European leaders fear that the drone incursions in Poland, Denmark, Germany and Norway are the shape of things to come. After all, drones can be produced enmasse for a fraction of the cost of fighter jets or ballistic missile systems and be used for a larger spectrum of tasks: from intelligence gathering, probing, disruption to physical destruction. Yet for a rapidly developing threat, there is as of yet no rapidly developing response. European countries are chasing the threat rather than getting ahead of it.

The drone incidents would be serious enough in their own right but they have taken place in a context in which Europe is feeling less secure and more anxious. Russian MiG 31 jets have violated Estonian airspace leading Tallinn in quick succession after Warsaw to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty. Moscow has upped the ante in Ukraine by intensifying its bombardment of Ukrainian cities and has issued new threats against European countries that seek to give Kyiv more military assistance or deploy troops in Ukraine to implement a ceasefire. Reports of Russian ships mapping Europe’s critical undersea Internet cables and telecommunications links have made governments more wary of possible sabotage operations, as witnessed recently with the cutting of cables linking Finland and Sweden to the Baltic states. GPS navigation signals in EU airspace have been repeatedly disrupted and hostile actors are today even using satellite jammers from space in addition to ground transmitters for this purpose, which poses a major threat to civilian aviation. The German Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, and the head of UK Space Command, Paul Tedman, have also told the media that Russia has been “stalking” their military satellites and has tried to jam them. Satellites now power 20% of the UK economy. A few months ago, the focus in eastern Europe was on the Eastern Shield in Poland or the Baltic Defence Line. These construction projects are reinforcing borders to guard against illegal migrants or the infiltration of hostile proxy groups. They involve digging ditches, building fences, installing sensors, increasing drone surveillance and erecting barriers against military attacks such as dragon’s teeth to stop tanks. Yet now it is the sky above the land along Europe’s eastern borders, which is getting the attention. EU Defence Ministers from eastern and northern Europe met recently with the EU Commissioner for Defence, Andrius Kubilius, and agreed that Europe urgently requires a “Drone Wall”. This is a multilayered system of early warning sensors, airborne counter-drones, ground-based lasers and jammers, ground-based missiles and cannon, air defence frigates deployed to coastal waters and finally fighter jets like F16, F35 and Eurofighters that can be scrambled in extremis to shoot down drones. It was F16 and F35 fighter jets that were used to shoot down 4 of the 21 Russian drones that penetrated Polish airspace. The question is to what extent the EU as a whole sees a Drone Wall as both feasible and desirable, particularly when it comes to diverting resources from other military procurement programmes, for instance military vehicle production and ammunition stockpiling.

This question was taken up by the EU leaders at their informal summit devoted to security and defence in Copenhagen, an especially appropriate location given the drone incidents in Denmark. The leaders agreed that Europe is exposed and vulnerable to drones with gaps in its counter-drone defences and a lack of capabilities. This is not reassuring as drones have been around for a long time and the conflict in Ukraine already in its third year has raised enormously their importance in modern warfare. Drones account currently for 78% of all military casualties in the “killing zone”, 20km on either side of the military line of contact in the Donbas where anything that moves can be engaged by a drone within minutes. Fourteen small Ukrainian drone units are responsible for 30% of Russian battlefield casualties. This demonstrates how drones have made modern warfare disproportionate in terms of cost-effectiveness with very cheap technology now achieving casualty rates previously achieved by very expensive, high tech platforms. Moreover, the supply is almost inexhaustible. Russia is currently aiming to produce 5 million drones annually and Ukraine 2 million. Attacking drone production plants has become a priority military objective for both sides. Moscow claimed to have destroyed four Ukrainian drone factories in one week of air strikes. The clear lessons from Ukraine make it all the more surprising that the EU has waited for drones to penetrate its own airspace before taking decisive action. As a result, EU member states have had to use expensive fighter jets and missiles costing hundreds of thousands of euros to shoot down drones costing as little as €2,000. No military strategy where the defence costs massively more than the offence is sustainable in the long run, especially as drones become progressively cheaper and sophisticated air to air and ground-to-air missiles become more expensive. Moreover, as Russia has shown in Ukraine, using unarmed decoy drones is a cheap and effective way of forcing adversaries to use up valuable and costly air defence assets for limited military results. These missiles need to be preserved to protect Europe’s airspace against Russian aircraft and missiles in a true war situation. Defence along borders with rows of air defence missiles is also of limited value when drones can easily be smuggled across borders and launched locally as Ukraine itself demonstrated when it hid drones in furniture vans and drove them to within a few kilometres of a Russian strategic bomber base in Siberia. Whereas states themselves own and control missiles and aircraft, drones can be easily manufactured and used by criminal and proxy groups, making it convenient for states to deny involvement and, like Russia, protest that any robust response would constitute aggressive escalation with unpredictable consequences. Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club, President Putin has already scoffed at Danish claims of Russian complicity in the drone incidents, accusing NATO allies of using a fake Russian drone threat to justify anti-Moscow “hysteria” and increased defence spending. Moreover, as the EU covers a large geographical territory and drones can penetrate its airspace from virtually any direction, ensuring a comprehensive EU-wide counter-drone defence is extremely difficult. Put drone shields around Copenhagen airport and next day they show up at Munich airport. Focus on northern Europe and countries in the south, like Italy and Greece, claim that they are being neglected. As the discussion at the EU summit in Copenhagen underscored, all these factors make it complicated to formulate a comprehensive counter-drone strategy balancing immediate technical counter measures with a longer term deterrence strategy and the adoption of political and economic responses such as more sanctions on Moscow if its deliberate intent can be proven. There is an urgent need to show solidarity and offer mutual support, and this EU member states have done with France and the UK sending extra jets to Poland while Sweden, Finland, France, Norway, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, the Netherlands and the United States offered drone detection and jamming equipment to Denmark. NATO also dispatched a German frigate, Hamburg, to the Baltic region as part of its Baltic Sentry mission. Other states brought forward procurement decisions on upgrading air defence systems, for instance Lithuania, which contracted to purchase Swedish MSHORAD and Norwegian NASAMS batteries. Romania rushed to sign an agreement with a Ukrainian company for joint production of drones with counter-drone capability using EU SAFE funds. Yet beyond such immediate and reactive steps, the EU needs to take a step back and consider a more comprehensive strategy to deal with a drone threat that can come both in the form of cheap, amateur projectiles to cause havoc and disruption to normal civilian life and in the form of larger more capable military grade drones for large scale physical destruction in wartime. A long term and diverse threat clearly requires a long term and diverse solution. Apart from securing counter-drone technology currently on the market and rushing it into service, what are the challenges that EU leaders and their military and diplomatic advisers need to address?

In the first place, learning from Ukraine’s experience and developing a common approach with Kyiv. Russia’s strategy is clearly to divert Europe’s attention and budgets away from assisting Ukraine as panicked European governments give priority to their own air defence. So, it was encouraging that notwithstanding the drone incursions, Germany announced that it was sending two further Patriot missile defence batteries to Ukraine and European Commission President Von der Leyen confirmed a further EU support package of €2bn for Ukraine’s drone defence. The more Russian drones that Ukraine can shoot down over its own territory, the fewer that Russia will have in its stockpiles to provoke or try to intimidate Ukraine’s western neighbours. At the same time, Ukraine has been in the forefront of drone innovation in wartime conditions and has spearheaded new technologies in drone defence such as drone nets, AI driven autonomous targeting, sophisticated sensors, advanced jammers and airborne killer drones. President Zelensky has seized on the opportunity for more defence cooperation with Ukraine’s Western partners, which can show that his country can be a provider of security and not just a supplicant for aid. He has proposed to export some of Ukraine’s domestic drone production, welcome more Western investment in joint drone projects and production in Ukraine and to integrate Ukraine’s air defence with NATO along borders that could help with early warning and tracking. The Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister, Sergiy Boyev, has been in Washington offering to share Ukraine’s drone technology with the US. Ukraine could use the proceeds of drone sales to the US to buy high end US weapons. What EU countries really need to learn from Ukraine is speeding up the pace of innovation through close cooperation with the private sector. Small defence companies and startups are embedded with the military and able to integrate battlefield data real time and make modifications and upgrades to drone technology within days or weeks to get around Russian counter-measures. Ukraine also has shown how commercially available technologies can be rapidly enhanced and upscaled for both strikes and air and missile defence. Compare this to procurement practices in EU countries where it takes years or even decades to build a new frigate or upgrade a fighter jet as governments and industry haggle over price, design specifications and production shares. France, Germany and Italy will finally get a medium range long endurance reconnaissance drone in 2028, 15 years after launching the project. If the EU could adopt many of Ukraine’s accelerated smart innovation and development practices for the urgent need for drone technology, this could help to revolutionise defence procurement for many other weapons systems within the EU and NATO in the future. It would enable the EU to stop falling behind the faster defence innovation cultures of Russia and China. Yet such a policy will require permanent vigilance and sustained investment.

A second priority is to establish the right legal framework for drone operations in European airspace. Police in Germany, for instance, do not have the authority (or the equipment) to shoot down suspect or potentially hostile drones. The German Aviation Security Act does not allow the Bundeswehr to intervene in civil defence outside warfare, although in the wake of the recent drone incidents the Federal government is now proposing to urgently bring in new legislation giving the police greater authority. A framework is needed to facilitate intelligence sharing between the military authorities and law enforcement and to clarify who has the responsibility to respond to incidents. Is it, for instance, the police when it comes to drones loitering near civilian airports or electricity switching stations or the military when it comes to military airbases or radar sites? Who would be first responder and back up in any given situation, particularly if a threat to both civilian and military facilities was identified at the same time? Furthermore, onerous and national certification rules have made it difficult to test and deploy military drones in EU airspace in peacetime or to send drones across national airspace borders into neighbouring airspace where the operating rules and certification requirements can be very different. So, the EU needs to build on its Single European Sky initiative adopted a decade ago to harmonise the rules and procedures for airspace management across the Union. This would be based on pre-clearance and access agreements for drone operations and interception once a common NATO early warning system based on satellites and sensors had identified a hostile drone incident or unusual and potentially threatening behaviour. The issue of debris and liability for accidental harm to civilians and property from ‘collateral damage’ following interceptions also carries potential legal consequences that will need to be addressed.

At the same time, EU law has to be adjusted to the ambiguity and uncertainty of grey zone warfare, especially involving sabotage or the destruction and disruption of critical infrastructure. We have just had a telling example in Finland. On 3 October a Finnish court dismissed the government’s case against the crew of the Eagle S, a Russian linked tanker which had been found to have dragged its anchor along the Baltic seabed resulting in the cutting of a telecommunications cable between Finland and Estonia. The court determined that the accusation of deliberate sabotage was unproven and that alleged negligence must be pursued against the ship’s owner or flag state or the home countries of the crew members. The court dismissed the prosecution’s claim for damages saying that Finnish law could not be applied to this particular case. The Finnish government has to decide whether to appeal this verdict but already the judgement is worrying for those who wish to use the rule of law to punish and deter the perpetrators of hybrid warfare actions. The EU cannot be legally defenceless against those who seek to undermine it or actually harm it because of legal standards that apply only to outright military aggression conducted by clearly identifiable state actors. Hybrid warfare is a criminal activity committed by individuals who need to be held liable. This makes it urgent for EU leaders to commission a comparative review of member state legislation on hybrid warfare activities to benchmark existing laws and jurisprudence against each other and formulate a common EU legal approach that avoids legal havens or soft jurisdictions for the perpetrators.

In third place is establishing the right airspace management system with clear and commonly agreed red lines and rules of engagement. President Macron of France has called for shooting down hostile drones. A view given surprisingly robust endorsement by US President Trump. Certainly, it is easier to do this than to shoot down Russian fighter jets or other aircraft violating NATO airspace, although Turkey did precisely this in 2015 with little protest from Moscow. Europe has already crossed the Rubicon in this regard as Polish and Dutch pilots have shot down four Russian drones in Polish airspace. What is now required is a clear decision making process between national authorities and the NATO command structure to engage suspect or hostile drones as quickly as possible once they have penetrated NATO airspace. It is better to shoot them down in open countryside than to wait for them to be over urban areas or critical infrastructure. It is also better to bring them down through jamming or electronic countermeasures than to have to blow them up with artillery and missiles that will produce dangerous debris and potentially casualties or physical damage. Engaging drones in Ukrainian airspace close to borders is also something that NATO needs to examine and to coordinate with Kyiv as part of an integrated air monitoring system. Both NATO and the EU need to review their satellite monitoring capabilities in border areas and the number of AWACS monitoring aircraft that are available for round the clock missions in eastern Europe. Yet again what matters above all is for European allies to be clear about their red lines and be consistent in enforcing them. Isolated steps do not produce deterrence. Russia will as usual be on the lookout for inconsistency, hesitation and different approaches, particularly among those European governments that will play down the drone problem, treat it as a nuisance rather than as a real military threat, and hope that by showing restraint Putin will cease his provocations and leave them alone.

Fourth in the list of priorities is securing critical infrastructure and making it harder for adversaries to launch drones from within the EU. As mentioned, France has impounded the Russian shadow fleet tanker, the Boracay, on suspicion of launching drones against Denmark. Yet even if this case remains unproven, the ship and its crew can still be held for violating EU sanctions against Moscow’s shadow fleet and not having the requisite ownership, safety and sea worthiness documentation. The Boracay incident, however, demonstrates the problem of how to spot hostile drone operations or attack preparations originating within Europe by Russian or other hostile intelligence services or Russia linked saboteurs and proxies. EU member states with the support of the EU border agency, Frontex, will need to step up controls to detect the smuggling of drone parts or equipment that could be used for disruptive drone flights but also to interfere with legitimate European drone operations (for instance law enforcement, meteorological and agriculture monitoring or commercial deliveries). President Macron has also suggested that EU member states give themselves authority to board and inspect more suspect vessels in EU territorial waters. National intelligence services will clearly have to step up their monitoring of suspect groups and criminal gangs and share information on potential drone threats. The EU’s Europol in The Hague has had some success in coordinating intelligence for police investigations, particularly with its European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC). Domestic hostile drone operations could be classified as a form of terrorism and the work of this Centre re-programmed to focus more on the drone threat. More effective prevention through better cooperation within the EU can act as a deterrent as can the successful prosecution of the perpetrators of hostile drone incidents through the courts. Police forces and the criminal justice system will need to see which level of evidence is needed for this purpose and how to gather it, bearing in mind the Finnish legal precedent referred to above. Meanwhile, and given the effectiveness of drones in the war in Ukraine in damaging ports, train networks and oil refineries and storage depots, the EU should review the status of drone defences for a priority list of critical infrastructure sites, especially ports like Antwerp and Rotterdam and rail hubs, that are also critical for NATO’s logistical supply chain and reinforcement forces in crisis and wartime.

Fifth and finally getting the best synergy out of EU-NATO cooperation. Both organisations have stepped up their activities in response to the drone threat so more deconfliction and active cooperation between the two is now urgent. NATO has the integrated command structure and is responsible for day to day operational air and missile defence across Europe. So, immediate military enhancements need to come from the NATO side of Brussels. Following the Russian incursions, allies have sent additional assets to Poland but these, like Dutch F35 jets in Poland or Italian F35s in Estonia, are temporary rotational deployments, making the air defence of eastern Europe an uneven affair, depending on the assets that are in theatre at any given time. Since Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO has relied on rotational air policing, with six monthly voluntary contributions, rather than a fully integrated and permanent air and missile defence. This arrangement was adequate for tracking Russian aircraft flying near to NATO airspace in (relatively) quieter times, but is not fit for purpose for the higher levels of Russian provocations that we are now facing with direct actions on allied territory. NATO needs to build a system of permanent airbases in eastern Europe similar to what existed in Germany during the Cold War with allies relocating air squadrons and air defence missile batteries to these forward based airbases. NATO also needs to look at an Israeli style air defence arrangement with high altitude (Arrow), medium altitude (David’s Sling) and low altitude (Iron Dome) interceptors backed up by air defence frigates offshore, fighter aircraft, electronic warfare capabilities and a wider reaching set of satellites and sensors for early warning and tracking. As the alliance implements its capability targets and pushes for higher national defence spending, air and missile defence is undoubtedly the most important gap in NATO’s collective defence posture that needs to be plugged.

But NATO will struggle to achieve this goal if the EU does not provide the resources and generate the industrial cooperation projects, including military satellites where the Commission and the European Space Agency have major roles to play. The EU can move drone technology and production higher up the priority list for its common funding investments under the ReArmEurope and the European Defence Industry Programme. The two big Brussels institutions need to sit down together and figure out a rational division of labour that allows the results of NATO’s drone tests and exercises to be fed via the EU to Europe’s defence industries and innovation companies. Interoperability of the various national systems through the effective use of bridging technologies is an important aspect for NATO and EU defence planners to discuss with industry, all the more so as a rush by EU member states to acquire counter-drone technology and deploy it immediately and in ad hoc fashion could well reduce the compatibility of systems and make achieving interoperability harder and much more expensive. The European Commission has been tasked by the European Council to develop a drone strategy roadmap over the next month. This is a good opportunity to bring NATO into the conversation from the get-go.

Given the urgency of the drone threat, the discussion among EU leaders at their recent summit in Copenhagen was not particularly edifying. Some leaders preferred to debate semantics, questioning Commission President Von der Leyen’s description of a “Drone Wall”, and arguing that this promised an unachievable level of protection, rather than deciding on immediate actions such as the allocation of resources to new drone projects or cost sharing and industrial support arrangements between the European Commission and front line states in eastern Europe. As always at EU meetings, leaders liked to promote the interests of their own countries or regions rather than take an EU wide perspective. Others preferred to debate the fine points of whether the EU or NATO should be in the lead. Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, complained rightly that “it would have been useful to have concrete decisions, financial decisions” rather than dilute the sense of urgency by arguing over how many years it would take the EU to build the perfect drone wall. Despite these hesitations, Von der Leyen and those EU member states who feel a sense of urgency about the drone threat should stick to their guns. The perfect should not become the enemy of the good. Counter-drone technology to protect airports, train stations or other critical infrastructure is available now. But this threat, using for the most part cheap, off the shelf drone technology, will require a different type of interception and civilian-military cooperation compared to the big and heavy military drones that Russia can fire across EU borders fitted with high explosives and with a much greater ability to cause significant casualties. The threat here is first and foremost along the EU’s eastern borders and so here is where the strategic priority must lie. Poland has the resources to develop its own layered air defence capabilities but the Baltic States cannot protect themselves alone and can benefit from multinational EU investment funds such as SAFE or the European Defence Fund as well as joint industrial consortia and bulk procurement schemes. But as with all ventures, the key thing is to get started and to show real resolve through concrete steps rather than only words of condemnation. If Putin does not see real capabilities and a firm intention to use them on the side of NATO allies, he will continue his provocations and up the ante. Using more risky kinetic and military means to probe for Europe’s weaknesses. If Europeans cannot act by themselves and are paralysed if America is not by their side, they will wake up one day to the nightmarish situation of Russian troops occupying EU territory. Restraint by Europe will not produce restraint by Moscow but only further escalation. So it is better to accept a little escalation now and re-establish a degree of deterrence vis a vis Moscow than be confronted with the dangers of a major escalation down the road (or accept Russia’s terms). Rebuilding Europe’s forces for full scale conflict and territorial defence will take some years, but a Drone Shield (if not an impenetrable Drone Wall) can be put in place quickly. It will be the first test of Europe’s seriousness in looking after its own defence.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.