The recent appearance of nineteen Russian drones over Poland set off alarm bells across Europe and marked a dangerous new escalation in the Kremlin’s hybrid war against the West. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said it was “the largest concentration of violations of NATO airspace that we have seen,” while Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk calledthe incident “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II.”
Russia’s unprecedented drone raid was widely interpreted as a test of NATO’s readiness and resolve. Former US Army Europe commander General Ben Hodges said the operation was a Kremlin rehearsal with the objective of checking NATO response times and capabilities. “Using F-35s and F-22s against drones shows we are not yet prepared,” he noted.
I Many analysts joined Hodges in commenting on the inefficiency of employing NATO fighter jets and expensive missiles to counter relatively cheap Russian drones. The obvious shortcomings of this approach have underlined the need to radically rethink how NATO members address air defense amid the rapidly evolving threats posed by Russian drone warfare. Ukraine’s experience of combating Putin’s drone fleet will prove crucial in this process.
Voice of Ukraine 