The Polish government believes Russia deliberately sent drones into its airspace last month to test the resolve of the country and its NATO allies—and that such tests will keep coming. That means the Polish military needs a better counter-unmanned systems plan, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told reporters on Wednesday.
Though the Dutch, Germans, and Italians all chipped into the response with air power and missile defenses, Sikorski said fighter jets and Patriots are probably not the best platform to take down cheap, unarmed drones.
“It is uneconomical and impractical to be defending our space with F-35s using Sidewinder missiles against drones,” he said. “If we are to defend the NATO airspace from a hypothetical large number of drones on the same night, then we need to fill the gap in the ladder of our responses.”
The European Union is leading that effort, he added, securing $150 billion in loans for member states, as well as joint ventures with Ukraine, whose counter-UAS prowess was born out of necessity in the nearly four years it’s been fighting off Russian drones.
“Ukraine is now the best country in the world, on our side, on drone war, on drones and anti-drone,” Sikorski said. “And then Ukraine and Russia are in a race, which means that Russia is better than us.”
NATO’s Joint Analysis, Training And Education Centre is standing up in Poland with the express task to help procure this type of technology,, he said
“You know, militaries are very conservative, and there’s a threat that they will, you know, buy the toys that they’ve always wanted rather than address the next challenge,” Sikorski said. “So yes, we need to shake them up, to really implement the lessons learned from this war.”
Poking the bear
Assessments so far have found that the Russian drones that entered Polish airspace on Sept. 9 and 10, then later Romania, Estonia, and Denmark, are part of a coordinated campaign.
On the night of Sept. 9, Sikorski said, the drones that entered Polish airspace were distinct from a separate operation by the Ukrainians. First, they launched from a different location, but they were also all unarmed, while Ukrainian strategy has been to send unarmed drones first to swamp anti-aircraft defenses, then send the armed drones to attack.
“What reached Poland was exclusively unarmed drones, and they flew along the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, criss-crossing it,” Sikorski said. “And normally, the Belarusians try to shoot down Russian drones that have lost their way before they enter the Polish airspace. This time they were ordered not to do it, and the firefight with the drones took all night.”
They clearly didn’t want to start a war, he added, because the drones weren’t armed, but they wanted to test the response.
Poland is prepared to shoot down Russian aircraft in the future, Sikorski said, and that stance has been backed up by both the NATO secretary general and President Donald Trump.
In addition to better counter-drone technology, Poland is hoping that the continuous presence of U.S. troops on the ground there will also deter Russia.
“Obviously, we hope that what President Trump promised our president two weeks ago in Washington, that the U.S. troop presence in Poland will not go down, and it can even go up,” he said.
The U.S. Army’s forward-deployed V Corps headquarters at Camp Kosciuszko rotates in about 10,000 soldiers at a time. Poland offsets the cost to the tune of $15,000 per soldier per year, Sikorski said.
“Which means that it’s actually cheaper to keep and to exercise your soldiers in Poland than in the United States.”
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