European leaders met in Copenhagen under a sky heavily guarded by military, law-enforcement and technological reinforcements from , sent in especially for the occasion after the stress caused by the previous week’s seven-day wave.
“There is not only , there is a hybrid war going on in Europe right now,” warned the host, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, adding that she believed Europe had “underestimated how big a threat Russia actually is.”
“We need to strengthen our , and this includes building up a European network of anti-drone measures that can protect and, of course, also neutralize intrusion from outside,” Frederiksen said after the EU summit Wednesday. She estimated the bloc needs to be able to “defend ourselves totally” by the year 2030 at the latest.
That’s the target date on a European Commission “scoping document” released before the summit, and which European Council President Antonio Costa said received “broad support” at the summit. The four “flagship projects” the European Commission has proposed and prioritized include an “Eastern Flank Watch,” an air defense shield, a defense space shield and the “drone wall.”
But due to the experiences in Poland and — and in just the last day and Belgium — it’s counter-drone defense that’s really driving the discussion for the moment. Some experts are criticizing the use of the term “drone wall,” however, because it may give citizens the impression there is some way to erect a near-impenetrable fortress against aerial incursions.
Among the critics is even French President Emmanuel Macron. “I’m wary of quick terms,” he said. “Do Europeans have iron domes or drone walls? Things are more sophisticated and more complex.”
A hole in the wall argument
Daniel Hegedus with the German Marshall Fund of the United States is among those urging caution in over-promising the prospects of a drone wall. Hegedus does not dispute that European countries must pursue and purchase counter-drone capabilities as quickly as possible. But, he tells DW, “it’s a question whether really the most efficient way is to have a huge pan-European program” like the European Commission and some member states may be envisioning, underscoring that “there are no impenetrable defenses.”
“If we take a look on the cost-efficiency of this [drone wall] effort actually in the defense context,” Hegedus said, “then unfortunately we also need to come to the conclusion that with all of these resources, Europe could build actually much more effective deterrence or can influence the cost-benefit calculations of Russia instead of investing heavily in a project that will bear its first fruits in two or three years at the earliest.”
To do both these things, Hegedus suggests ensuring Moscow knows there will be a heavy cost in continuing these hybrid tactics, “steps that will cost Russia immediately and dearly.” He says European countries should respond to an escalation of hybrid war on them with “further deliveries of long-range strike weapons to Ukraine, [so that] Ukrainians will immediately have larger capacities .”
Get It Strait(s)
Another of Hegedus’ recommendations for curbing Kremlin aggression including drone provocations may get more traction with two developments Friday in Denmark and Sweden. He would like to see Denmark and Sweden, with EU backing that could go all the way to a maritime mission, much more aggressively police the Danish Straits, a critical waterway connecting the Baltic and North seas, which Russia uses for transporting about a third of its seaborne crude oil exports.
At a hastily-called press conference early Friday morning, the director of Denmark’s defense intelligence service, Thomas Ahrenkiel, released the first national threat assessment of Russia’s hybrid war efforts. “We have seen several incidents in the Danish straits where Danish air force helicopters and naval vessels have been targeted by tracking radars and physically pointed at with weapons from Russian warships,” Ahrenkiel said.
A shadow-fleet tanker that was positioned off the Danish coast early last week, now detained by France, is also suspected of being involved in the drone wave against Denmark.
Later on Friday, Sweden proposed legislation to increase security in the Baltic Sea by expanding its coast guard’s ability to conduct maritime surveillance.
Kyiv holds the key
Speaking after meeting EU leaders in Copenhagen, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was ready to pitch in on a European shield. “Ukraine can truly help,” he said. “No country in Europe has more experience than Ukraine in defending against drones and missiles.”
Daniel Hegedus agrees this is Europe’s best way forward. “The best-case scenario,” he said, “would be Ukraine scrapping its exports control, at least in the case of EU member states” so that Ukrainian capabilities can be bought, adopted and implemented as soon as possible.
But what he fears is that “EU member states will be dragged in in a long and superficial discussion about the topic without actually launching the initiative, working on the implementation and started to ramp up their capacities.”
The drones that continue to fly overhead in Europe should be a constant reminder there’s no time for that. Asked what Europeans can learn from Ukraine in this regard, Mette Frederiksen answered in one word: “everything.”
Edited by: Andreas Illmer
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