The European Union’s ‘Drone Wall’ initiative aims to protect the continent’s Eastern Flank against Russian drone attacks. Its implementation is following an aggressive schedule. On 9 September 2025, NATO combat aircraft took their first ever kinetic action against a Russian military threat. Between 22.30 Zulu/Z on 9 September 2025 and 05.65Z the following morning, NATO jets shot down four of an estimated 23 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Russian government admitted to launching the aircraft but said they were not directed against Polish targets. The Russian UAVs, reports stated, were engaged by Koninklijke Luchtmacht (Royal Netherlands Air Force) Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning-II and Siły Powietrzne (Polish Air Force) General Dynamics/ Lockheed Martin F-16C/D jets. Other NATO assets which supported the effort to down these UAVs included an Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force) Gulfstream G550 airborne early warning and control aircraft, and a NATO Airbus A330-200 tanker. Fortunately, the UAVs did not cause any casualties, although some light structural damage to buildings in southern and eastern Poland, where most of them fell did occur.
The incident in Poland was not an isolated case; Russian UAVs had already violated the airspace of European NATO members earlier in 2025. For example, the Romanian government announced on 17 January 2025 that several Russian UAVs had entered the country’s airspace. Later, on 20 August, a Russian Geran-2 UAV crashed near Osiny, a village in eastern Poland. Prior to the 9/10 September 2025 incident, Poland had experienced two violations of its airspace by Russian UAVs on 4 September and 8 September respectively. Reports noted that throughout the rest of the year, Russian UAV violations of Estonia, Moldova and Türkiye also occurred place. Moreover, incidents of unauthorised UAV flights in the vicinity of Copenhagen International Airport, Volkel airbase and Eindhoven airport, both in the southern Netherlands, also took place. Towards the end of the year, French authorities reported that the Marine Nationale (French Navy) base at I’Ile Longue in Brittany on the French Atlantic coast was overflown by five UAVs which were neutralised. The base is home to the Navy’s Le Triomphant class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.
Motivations and responses
Some of the Russian UAV flights over the borders of Estonia, Moldova, Poland and Romania, all either NATO or Allied nations, are likely to be deliberate acts by the Kremlin aimed at causing local disruption. The flights may also be performed to test the reactions and capabilities of local air defences. Moldova, Poland and Romania may also experience UAV violations as fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine, though lackadaisical flight planning might occasionally cause Russian UAVs to veer off course. Likewise, technical problems and/or jamming could cause these aircraft to lose their way. The reasons for the UAV flights over the airports and military bases in Denmark, France and the Netherlands are more mysterious. There is a credible risk that such incidents could be mounted by Russian secret agents, or local Russian sympathisers, to cause economic disruption, particularly by forcing an airport to suspend flights during UAV activity. The illicit flights may also be used to gather intelligence on military facilities.
Russia’s actions have not gone unanswered. Alongside NATO’s engagement of the UAVs violating Polish airspace in September 2025, the Alliance has activated Operation Eastern Sentry. The Polish government made a declaration of Article Four of the North Atlantic Treaty, the Alliance’s constitution, on 10 September 2025. Article Four specifies that a member can call for consultations within the Alliance if “the territorial integrity, political independence or security” of a member country is threatened. Operation Eastern Entry was subsequently launched on 12 September 2025. According to the Alliance, it involves combat aircraft, ground-based air defence assets and anti-air warfare vessels provided by Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain. Eastern Sentry will enhance the air defences of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Supporting NATO’s efforts are two European Union (EU) initiatives. These efforts take the form of the European Drone Defence Initiative (EDDI), also known as the European Drone Wall and Eastern Flank Watch.
Viable response
As a primer on the EDDI and Eastern Flank Watch makes clear, interception of errant UAVs has been hitherto performed by expensive platforms such as the F-35A and F-16C/D aircraft discussed above. Publicly available figures estimate the per-hour flying costs of an F-35 variant to be between USD 33,000 and USD 42,000. A Raytheon AIM-120 series active radar homing air-to-air missile can cost circa USD 1 million per round, according to publicly available data. One of the Polish F-16s was reported to have fired such a missile at a Russian UAV during the September 2025 incursions. It is clear therefore that responding to massed UAV violations across the eastern borders of Europe’s EU and NATO members could exact a significant financial cost. Exacerbating the cost burden of defending NATO and EU airspace against Russian UAVs is almost certainly among Moscow’s motivations. As the EU primer notes: “(d)eploying fighter jets and expensive air-to-air missiles to counter drones is operationally possible, but fiscally unsustainable”.
The establishment of the Eastern Flank Watch was proposed by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, in her 2025 State of the Union address. According to the EU, the Eastern Flank Watch will be a network of complementary and interlocking physical, air and maritime defences that will be deployed across the same nations as Operation Eastern Sentry, with the addition of Sweden and Norway. As a European Parliament briefing paper on the Eastern Flank Watch makes clear, this will “reinforce the EU’s eastern borders against hybrid, cyber, maritime and conventional threats from Russia and Belarus through the integration of air defence, electronic warfare, surveillance and maritime security systems”. The EU expects Eastern Flank Watch to work closely “with NATO’s integrated command and control structures and operations, such as Baltic Air Policing and Operation Eastern Sentry”. Eastern Flank Watch is expected to start implementation in 2026, the European Parliament’s paper states and its “full functionality” is expected by the end of 2028. In December 2025, the governments of Finland and Poland announced they would jointly lead Eastern Flank Watch.
Eastern Flank Watch is one of four EU Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 flagship projects alongside the EDDI, the European Air Shield and the European Space Sheild. The Roadmap has a relatively straightforward remit, which is to ensure “a sufficiently strong European defence posture to credibly deter its adversaries and respond to any aggression”, in its own words. The European Commission and the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, were tasked in June 2025 to draft the Roadmap. The drafting was the result of a decision to this end by the EU heads of state and government, and European Council; the latter decides the general political direction and policy priorities of the EU. European Union timelines call for initiatives such as the EDDI to be ready and operational by 2030. The European Air Shield will provide overarching air and missile defence to the EU’s membership and will be fully interoperable with NATO’s Air Command and Control System (ACCS). ACCS is a continent-wide Integrated Air Defence System (IADS) designed to protect the airspace and air approaches of NATO’s European membership. The EU’s Space Shield will establish “and protect a comprehensive European system of space capabilities that serve defence purposes, building on the EU space systems and existing national capabilities”, EU documents continue.
Implementing EDDI
The European Parliament’s briefing paper states that the European Drone Defence Initiative will develop a “cutting-edge interoperable system for countering and deploying drones”. At the heart of these efforts will be a multi-layered network of UAV sensors capable of detecting, identifying and tracking such aircraft. Once confirmed as hostile, the UAVs will be neutralised. The paper does not specify which effectors would be employed to this end, though kinetic capabilities are likely to feature. The latter could be short/ medium-range air defence systems including anti-aircraft artillery, or surface-to-air missiles. Kinetic effectors will be complemented by electronic attack: for example, jamming can interdict a UAV’s radio link with its pilot on the ground and stop the aircraft’s reception of position, navigation and timing signals from a global navigation satellite system constellation. Non-kinetic effectors could include directed energy weapons (DEW) using lasers or microwave radiation. It may even be possible to employ electronic attack systems able to enter a UAV’s control software, which could be compromised with malicious code allowing air defenders to take over the UAV and land it safely. It remains unclear however, from existing information in the public domain whether existing and/or new counter-UAV (CUAV) effectors will be used by the EDDI members to perform the CUAV mission. The same question is also relevant regarding sensor provision.
Sensors and effectors will need to be networked using multiple, redundant, secure communications. EU documents do not specify what communications architectures will network the EDDI but it is likely that this could include conventional military very/ultra-high Frequency (V/UHF: 30 MHz to 3 GHz) radio. V/UHF links could be reinforced with satellite communications (SATCOM) across dedicated, sovereign military/government constellations and/ or using leased, secure SATCOM bandwidth. Alongside SATCOM, dedicated fibre-optic networks could be employed. National telecommunications networks may also carry secure and encrypted internet-protocol traffic around the EDDI components. Fortunately, much of this military networking is likely to already be in place via NATO-wide initiatives such as ACCS.
The fourth piece of the EDDI jigsaw will be the command and control (C2) architectures to battle manage the detection, engagement and assessment of hostile drone encounters. For example, when, where and how will the Recognised Air Picture (RAP) regarding UAV threats be developed to support the EDDI? Will participating nations develop the RAP at the tactical level using their own CUAV systems. Would this RAP then be sent upwards to higher echelons to create a ‘Super RAP’ covering all, or part of the EDDI’s zone of responsibility? Will this Super RAP be developed at the national IADS Control and Reporting Centres populating the IADS of the EDDI member nations? Another important question relates to the C2 arrangements for the European Drone Defence Initiative: If hostile UAVs are detected and positively identified, how will the interception of these threats be managed? Which nation/s will be responsible to this end?
European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told ESD that the EDDI was conceived as a “multi-layered, technologically advanced system with interoperable counter-drone capabilities for detection, tracking and neutralisation”. Concerning the connectivity issue, Mr. Regnier stressed that the initiative “should be fully interoperable and connected among member states providing European situational awareness and (the) ability to act together and secure critical infrastructure together with NATO”. The spokesperson seems to imply that the EDDI would have a high degree of synergy with NATO capabilities. Might integration with the ACCS then be a possibility. Likewise, capabilities such as Poland’s Northrop Grumman Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) may have a key role to play within the EDDI architecture. According to the company, the IBCS supports Poland’s Raytheon MIM-104F medium- range/high-altitude surface-to-air missile batteries.
SAFE bet
From a financial perspective, Mr. Regnier stressed that the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) programme will have an important role to play. According to the EU’s own literature, the SAFE initiative provides a fund of USD 175 billion in long maturity, competitively priced loans. The loans can help finance large scale and urgent defence acquisitions. SAFE forms part of the EU’s 2030 readiness plans and is the first stage of a wider plan to eventually support up to USD 934 billion of defence spending by EU members. This spending will be essential to support the 2030 goals. SAFE will be used to support common procurements of defence capabilities across the EU to benefit at least one member state. Ukraine or European Economic Area/European Free Trade Association can also apply for SAFE funding. Furthermore, SAFE is temporarily supporting procurements by individual EU member states, with the latter mechanism intended to assist the timely satisfaction of urgent capability requirements. The use of the SAFE vehicle implies that EDDI members will make CUAV capabilities they either possess, or are procuring to meet national requirements, available to the wider European Drone Defence Initiative. Additional capability requirements not covered by these procurements may then be satisfied through the procurement of common capabilities via SAFE.
Clearly there are still unanswered questions regarding several elements of EDDI, not least concerning sensors, effectors, networking and C2. It is entirely possible that more information may come to light to this end over the coming year and beyond. As the European Parliament’s briefing paper makes clear, an initial operational capability for the EDDI is expected by the end of 2026. With the system expected to be fully functional by the end of 2027, national members of the European Drone Defence Initiative are currently drafting their plans concerning EDDI implementation. As for the unanswered questions, “we will know more once we take a look at the national plans Member States submit,” Mr. Regnier concluded.
Dr Thomas Withington
Author
Dr Thomas Withington is an independent electronic warfare, radar and military communications specialist based in France.
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