Cheap Russian drones made of wood and foam invaded Poland’s airspace this week and were shot down with multi-million dollar weapons systems — highlighting NATO’s lack of proper preparation for such threats.
At least 19 drones flew into Poland on Wednesday, marking a “political and military test from Russia. It’s very good that Poland detected and shot down the drones,” said Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
But the NATO action was far less effective than Ukraine’s typical response. The alliance shot down about three drones while Kyiv usually claims an 80 percent to 90 percent interception rate — despite facing much larger attacks.
Franke added there is a discrepancy between Russia’s low-cost gear and NATO’s expensive military response: “What are we going to do, send F-16s and F-35s every time? It’s not sustainable. We need to better equip ourselves with anti-drone systems.”
The threat posed by the drones was very real.
According to WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, five drones were on a direct flight path toward a NATO base before being intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. A NATO refueling aircraft, an Italian surveillance plane and a German Patriot air defense system were also reportedly involved in the operation.
That’s billions of dollars of equipment to counter cheap Russian Gerbera drones — knockoffs of Iran’s Shahed that cost an estimated $10,000 each to produce.
But that low-cost intrusion provoked a very high-level response.
Poland invoked NATO’s Article 4, which requires alliance members to convene for urgent talks. Both Poland and Latvia closed their eastern airspace, and NATO is reportedly mulling “defensive measures.”
On Wednesday, U.K. Defence Secretary John Healy announced he would ask top military brass how London can help bolster NATO’s air defenses over Poland. Ukraine has also offered its help.
“Poland has requested some support, including continued close monitoring, more intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, and more air defense,” a NATO official said.
Cheap drones, expensive missiles
Air defense has long been identified as one of the main capability gaps of NATO countries. The EU is also encouraging countries to spend part of the €150 billion in SAFE loans on air defense.
But a lot of that money is aimed at very expensive weapons.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself stressed that U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot and Franco-Italian SAMP/T air defense systems, each costing hundreds of millions of dollars, are not a sensible option to use against Russia’s cheap kamikaze drones.
Ukraine doesn’t use such equipment to counter waves of Russian unmanned aerial vehicles that can number in the hundreds on any given night. Instead it has developed its own very cheap counter-drones to knock down incoming Russian threats.
The issue was raised on Thursday during a briefing between NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and EU ambassadors in Brussels — the first time an alliance chief has participated in such a meeting.
Many participants worried that Wednesday’s response highlighted the West’s lack of readiness. NATO militaries would not be able to regularly use F-35s to intercept such invaders.
“Rutte himself concluded that, and no one disagreed,” one of the diplomats said.
According to Charly Salonius-Pasternak, CEO of the Helsinki-based Nordic West Office think tank, adjusting NATO’s response to Russia’s mass-produced, low-cost gear is long overdue.
“Are there lessons in terms of how to track and bring down lots of cheap drones that doesn’t involve a multi-million euro missile? Of course, but that’s not a new lesson,” he said. “What has the European political establishment done about it?”
“Some countries are adapting their arsenals — the ones who feel the threats more acutely — but it takes a while to implement budgetary decisions,” he added.
The challenges of drones
Some of Europe’s defense giants are trying to adapt to the fast-changing drone arms race.
In late August, Sweden’s Saab presented a new low-cost missile dubbed Nimbrix, designed to neutralize small, low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles. French arms procurement agency DGA also recently ordered a demonstrator for an anti-drone laser system from a group of companies including MBDA, Safran, Thales and Cilas.
However, smaller, innovative companies can have trouble breaking through. “Startups have made a lot of progress in terms of what is possible. We haven’t necessarily bought [what they’re selling] in Europe yet,” said Franke, from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
There are two main challenges ahead when it comes to defending against drones, she added.
The first is that one system won’t be able to fend off all threats. “By definition, we will need a layered defense, with both electronic and kinetic counter-measures.” The other is how quickly technology evolves: Both Ukraine and Russia are constantly adapting their offensive and defensive drones in a technological spiral.
That’s Ukraine’s approach. It uses electronic counter-measures as well as producing thousands of interceptor drones a month. Ukraine can face hundreds of drones a night, and defenders destroy the vast majority.
For European militaries, that will require a change from traditional procurement patterns of small batches of expensive weapons, France’s former defense staff chief, General Thierry Burkhard, told POLITICO last month.
“For certain equipment, it is probably better to buy in batches of 10, 15, 20 or perhaps 50,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if the company that develops it is not able to provide maintenance for 20 years, because in a year’s time, that thing will either be dead on the battlefield or obsolete.”
Jacopo Barigazzi, Victor Jack, Noah Keate and Lars Petersen contributed reporting.
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