NATO eyes ‘drone wall’ to deter Russian airspace incursions

Cheap yet effective – Russia’s drone incursions on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members have forced the military bloc to confront a new battlefield reality where countermeasure systems are the key to keeping Moscow’s appendages away from its backyard.

Building a 4,000-kilometer “drone wall” will serve as a litmus test of the bloc’s determination to deter Russia through close collaboration and military interoperability.

Russia’s provocations

In September this year, a fleet of Russian Gerbera-type drones was detected flying over the Polish airspace, resulting in the closure of several local airports.

NATO responded quickly by sending fighter jets like F-16s and F-35s to intercept the Russian drones, shooting down four using missiles like the AIM-9 Sidewinder.

With its territorial integrity under threat, Poland invoked Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which calls for the immediate consultation on a military situation.

Experts say that Russia’s unprecedented airspace violation against Poland was a calculated move designed to test NATO’s readiness, as well as the members’ cohesion in coordinating their response.

In this way, Russia managed to simulate how an aerial attack on a NATO member would have played out, measuring how fast the bloc would detect its drones and fighter jets, including identifying the weapons NATO has in its arsenal as the first line of defense.

“Drone wall”

In a State of the Union address in the same month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen endorsed the idea of a massive anti-drone network, stretching from Finland to Romania, serving as Europe’s first line of defense against future Russian provocations using loitering munitions.

While Europe is undoubtedly capable of matching Russia in conventional military hardware, methodical violations of NATO airspace through the use of drones are an entirely different strategy that the bloc has to approach beyond usual means to be effective.

For instance, the Gerbera-type drones unleashed by Moscow are estimated to cost $10,000 each.

Meanwhile, NATO countries scrambled multiple planes for hours to maintain control over the Polish airspace.

These include F-16s and F-35s, helicopters like the Mi-24, Mi-17, and Black Hawk, and finally a Polish Saab 340 aerial early warning control aircraft to support the operations.

Data shows that the operational cost of a Saab 340 per-hour flight is around $2,600.

Factoring in the per-hour flight cost of the other planes, as well as the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles that cost around $400,000 each, this represents a far more expensive NATO response than the actual threat.

Obviously, NATO cannot afford to employ the same strategy, as the price tag is too heavy when considering the size of the Russian drone incursions.

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A matter of will

However, it remains to be seen how a military project this large will be funded.

In the bloc’s case, money will not be a problem, but coordinating them could present bottlenecks that could delay construction.

With regards to access to advanced drone countermeasure systems, NATO could tap Ukraine, as the latter already possesses expertise in subcomponents like acoustic sensors that can be used to detect small and low-flying drones.

Other allies, like the United States, could offer its domestically developed anti-drone weapons in this agenda.

According to Brussels, it is aiming to complete the construction of the drone wall by 2027.

While the program’s projected completion mirrors the urgency of the threat posed by Russian drones, installing various guns, radars, and other support systems in land and sea over a distance as vast as 4,000 kilometers would be unprecedented.

This could throw a wrench in the bloc’s determination to enact a project as massive as a drone wall.

Finally, financing the project is a different matter altogether.

The bloc has not released details from which pockets the money for the project will come from, whether NATO will realign other defense-related spending for this purpose, or if it will be funded under a new finance initiative.

Despite this, not all is shrouded in shadows as Europe’s defense industry certainly stands to benefit from the project, especially since NATO will need the technological independence and flexibility if it’s serious about completing the project within a year.

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