One of the 19 Russian drones that crashed in a field 60 km inside Poland. Photo: Polish military operational command.
In the face of increasing belligerence and probing by Russia, and a growing view that the US can no longer be relied upon to meet its NATO obligations, European nations are rapidly increasing their defence spending.
Tensions have heightened in recent weeks after 19 Russian one-way drones pierced Polish airspace on 9 September, with several being shot down and others crash-landing away from populated areas.
Polish F-16 and Dutch F-35 fighters were sent to intercept the drones by an Italian airborne surveillance aircraft, and one of the drones struck a residential building in Wyryki-Wola, near the border junction of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.
An inspection of the crashed drones indicated they were the relatively unsophisticated Gerbera model and were not carrying any warheads, suggesting they were sent into Polish airspace to test air defences.
“There was an unprecedented violation of Polish airspace by drone-type objects,” the Polish military operational command said in a statement. “This is an act of aggression that posed a real threat to the safety of our citizens.”
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk alarmingly warned: “There is no reason to claim that we are in a state of war … but the situation is significantly more dangerous than all previous ones.”
He added that the prospect of conflict was “closer than at any time since the Second World War”.
In an 11 September podcast, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Senior Fellow Justin Bronk described the incursion as on a different scale to previous ones, and that NATO’s response to these violations was the most serious since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“One of the things that’s noticeably different this time is that we have up to 19 individual violations of one-way drones coming into Polish airspace, (which is) statistically speaking … too high a number to be a random failure in guidance systems,” he said.
The drone incursion was followed on 19 September by three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets intruding into Estonian airspace above islands in the Gulf of Finland, and not responding to radio calls warning them of the intrusion and ordering them to leave the area.
“This is an unprecedented and brazen intrusion – clear proof of Russia’s growing aggression,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said on social media, adding that the action should be met with “swift political and economic pressure”.
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kristen Michal added: “Such violation is totally unacceptable. The Government of Estonia has decided to request NATO Article 4 consultations.”
Article 4 is where a member nation brings an issue of concern related to the security of a member country to the table for discussion within the North Atlantic Council, a move that has been done only nine times since NATO was founded in 1949.
And it has now been revealed that Copenhagen Airport in Denmark and Danish and Norwegian airspace was closed for four hours overnight on 23 September after it was suspected small Russian drones had entered the area.
While it has not been confirmed where the drones originated from, there is a theory they may have been launched from the Russian-flagged cargo ship Astrol-1, which had transited the narrow straits linking the Baltic and North seas.
The scale of NATO’s military build-up is unprecedented since the heady days of the Cold War.
Examples of orders for systems of US origin from the past few months include AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles and helicopter-launched anti-tank missiles by the Netherlands, additional AMRAAMs by Italy and Finland, Javelin anti-armour missiles by Poland, a new long-range Patriot air-defence system by Denmark, and a new Naval Strike Missile coastal defence system by Bulgaria.
Germany is increasing its production of armoured trucks and supply vehicles, while Norway has ordered HH-60W Black Hawk helicopters, GBU-39 small-diameter bombs, Mk54 torpedoes, and five new Type 26 frigates. Belgium has approved the purchase of AIM-9X air-to-air missiles, and Canada will order new armoured vehicles and will soon confirm an order for 85 F-35 fighters.
Many of these smaller orders may well be weapons and systems ultimately destined for Ukraine through NATO and European military assistance programs.
NATO is also increasing its combat air policing mission in the Baltic states over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which don’t have combat aircraft of their own, and has increased airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) flights along Ukraine’s western border and over the Black Sea.
It is unclear what Russia’s endgame is from these and other grey-zone efforts to disrupt, confuse, and stretch NATO’s defences.
Russia’s lack of results in Ukraine clearly indicates it is unlikely to be able to fight, let alone win, a protracted conventional war against NATO, even without US intervention. And although Russia has an overwhelmingly large nuclear force, there would be no winners if a conflict were to escalate to that point.
Nor is it clear what the NATO response to these incursions should be.
The organisation is no doubt considering whether these probes should continue to be countered on a case-by-case basis, or whether NATO and European forces should stage some kind of counter-attacks, such as those conducted by Ukrainian forces on Russian drone factories, airfields, and other militarily-significant targets.
