NATO's first drone battle exposes vulnerabilities

TALLINN, Estonia — For more than three years, Ukraine has waged an almost nightly battle against Russian attack drones. NATO on Wednesday got a taste of that fight. Polish authorities said they detected 19 violations of their airspace, prompting a million-dollar response as fighter jets were scrambled and Patriot air defense systems placed on alert. Up to four drones were shot down with the help of NATO allies. The incursion, which lasted for several hours, showed NATO's vulnerability to drone warfare. Russian authorities said they didn't target Poland, and Belarus, a close ally, said some of the drones "lost their course" because they were jammed. Nonetheless, several European leaders and experts said Poland was deliberately targeted. If one or two drones crossed into Polish airspace, it could have been a "technical malfunction," but it "defies imagination that it could have been accidental" when there were 19, said Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski. While proving intent is difficult, "to have several to lose their way is starting to look rather deliberate," agreed Thomas Withington, an expert in electronic warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London. A goal, he suggested, could have been to test NATO's reaction and ability to respond to drones. Confusion and suspicion Since January, Russia has fired at least 35,698 attack drones at Ukraine according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Ukrainian air force. Polish airspace has been violated multiple times since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Fragments from Ukrainian missiles killed two people in Poland in 2023, while drones have strayed into Poland, Romana and Moldova as well as the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. But until Wednesday, no NATO country had sustained multiple incursions into its airspace. It was the first time NATO airpower was engaged against enemy targets inside a NATO country. Drone fragments were found about 554 kilometers (344 miles) into Polish territory — deeper than any previous incursion. Much remains unclear, and for now, NATO is cautious. "We do not yet know if this was an intentional act or an unintentional act," U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's supreme allied commander Europe, said Thursday. He went on: "I would not be able to tell you with any confidence today that it was 20 (drones) or that it was 10. We just have to get into the technical details to figure that out, to debrief the crews that were up, see what they saw, et cetera." It's difficult "without hard evidence," to say if Moscow really intended to fly the drones into Poland, said Ash Alexander-Cooper, a former specialist military commander and vice president at Dedrone, which produces technology to detect and neutralize drone threats. But, based on what is known about Russian drones and how they respond to electronic warfare, the experts who spoke to AP said it was highly possible the incursions were deliberate. Electronic warfare There are two key ways to neutralize most drones: either shoot them down, or hit them with electronic signals interference. Jamming and spoofing are the main ways to do that. Jamming severs the connection the drone has with a satellite navigation system, whereas spoofing tricks the drone into thinking it is somewhere else. If the drone were jammed — either by Ukraine or Poland — it would either land or fly back toward its point of origin in Russia or Belarus, said Withington. If it were spoofed, it could fly off course, crash or land. If the drone were spoofed, trying to jam it could actually "make the problem worse," said Alexander-Cooper. Jamming a drone normally sends it home, but Russia is now programming some drones so that their "home" is actually their target. If satellite communications are cut, the drones continue toward their targets. Military drones also have inertial navigation units, which use previous position fixes and gyroscopes to mark the drone's position relative to the earth so that it can keep flying without satellite or radio signals. In that case, the drones could only have penetrated deep into Polish airspace if Russia had given them a targeted "mission," said Withington. Million-dollar jets, cheap drones Russian attack drones — known as Shaheds — are "hard to disrupt" electronically, Alexander-Cooper said, which is why NATO scrambled jets to take them down. F-35 and F-16 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters were deployed, as well as Soviet-designed MI-24 and MI-17 helicopters, the Polish Defense Ministry said. German Patriot missile defense systems in Poland were also placed on alert. The response, Alexander-Cooper suggested, was economically disproportionate to the threat. "Firing million-dollar missiles ... is not an economical model that can be sustained" against drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars, he said. Gen. Wiesław Kukuła, General Commander of the Polish Armed Forces told Polish television the cost was beside the point. "What matters is the value of what this drone can destroy. If it's a Polish life, it has no price," he said. Lt. Gen. Andrus Merilo, Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, told AP it's important to look at "what kind of targets we are defending," rather than what's attacking them. The drones may be cheap, but the cost of a missile to repel them may be far outweighed by the damage they can do. If faced with drone swarms like those in Ukraine, there would not be "enough aircraft within the NATO fleet ... with enough missiles or enough interceptors to do the job," said Alexander-Cooper. It would also require putting fighter jet pilots — who are in limited supply and expensive to train — in harm's way, he said. Drone innovation Both Russia and Ukraine have rapidly developed new drones, technology and tactics. Since 2024, Russia has mixed decoy drones with no payload among armed Shaheds in order to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, which cannot easily distinguish between the two. Russia also has the ability to connect a chain of drones together to bounce a signal to extend another drone's range, said Fabian Hinz at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. In June, Ukraine used drones flown from trucks to strike million-dollar Russian warplanes deep inside the country, during Operation Spiderweb. Ukraine's security service said it used artificial intelligence to partly pilot the drones along a planned route in the event they lost signal. On the front lines, both Russia and Ukraine use fiber optic drones for surveillance and strikes. They are impossible to interfere with electronically as they are connected to the operator by a long, thin fiber optic cable. NATO versus drones Each night, Ukraine shoots down most Russian attack drones, according to data from its air force but even one or two can do serious damage. After Wednesday's incursion, Polish authorities said drone fragments were found at 16 locations. This could indicate that several drones escaped. The fact that some of the drones were able to fly so far into Polish airspace is an indication that "perhaps somewhere the detection capability was lacking," said Withington. Current NATO air defenses are largely set up to detect and neutralize fast-moving targets like cruise and ballistic missiles, said Withington. They are not, he said, designed to track small objects, often made from fiberglass or plastic, which don't reflect radar waves in the same way as a metal missile. Sikorski said Wednesday Poland needed a drone wall and "new techniques" to repel a mass attack. Nobody was killed during the incident and it would therefore be wrong to suggest NATO's response was a "failure," said Withington. But, he said, "it could have been far more serious. My concern is next time it might be."