Europe should not overreact to recent drone incursions in a hysterical way, the assistant director for research at the GLOBSEC GeoTech Center has told Euronews in an interview.
Incidents have recently been recorded in Poland, Denmark, Romania, and Estonia. In Poland, NATO jets have been alerted, as more than a dozen drones violated Polish airspace. In Denmark, Copenhagen airport was closed as a result of a drone incident. Yesterday, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told journalists Europe shouldn’t panic – and GLOBSEC’s Alexandr Burilkov agreed.
“This happens on a regular basis, especially during the Cold War. And yet, did the war ever start again? No, it didn’t. Maintaining a clear head and being pragmatic about these incidents, I believe, is crucial,” said Burilkov, adding: “And the lessons that they should really teach us is not to overreact hysterically. It’s just to be ready, just in case. So it’s not ignoring that there could be a threat.”
Danger is less now than during the Cold War era
Burilkov said the current threat is smaller compared to the threat during the Cold War era.
The Soviet Union was far more powerful than the Russian Federation could ever hope to be, he said. And there were routine incidents at geographic pinch points, when Soviet bombers and Soviet nuclear-capable aircraft intruded into Alaskan airspace.
“This has been happening for as long as the Soviet Union had jet aircraft. So all sorts of incidents happened during that period, which was a more tense period than today, without it ever descending into hot conflict, into open warfare. And we should really remember that,” said Burilkov, an expert on military and security issues in Russia, China, and the post-Soviet space, who’s also a member of the European Expert Network on Terrorism Issues.
NATO and Europe are far behind Russia and Ukraine in production
Euronews reached out to Burilkov to analyse the EU’s Drone Wall initiative. Last week, the European Commission floated the idea of a “drone wall” – a detection and response network along the EU’s eastern flank. This system would, supposedly detect and destroy suspicious drones entering the EU.
This initiative brought together ten member states: Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Finland – with the participation of Ukraine, the country with the most advanced drones’ capabilities.
NATO also joined the discussion, which, according to Burilkov, is understandable, as the alliance lags behind Russia and Ukraine when it comes to drone production.
“I think this is a question of adding really parallel capabilities because even though we are more than three years into the war, NATO is still relatively weak on drones compared to both Ukraine and Russia. Would the Russians have the advantage of having a larger industry? That’s one thing. The Ukrainians have the advantages of their innovation ecosystem, which is more flexible. But both of them are far ahead of Europe.”
Burilkov said that Europe needs to take into consideration two factors when setting up the Drone Wall initiative. First, there’s the swiftly developing drone sector, and then there’s the issue of mass production.
“You can iterate on them a lot faster than other systems because they’re small and easy to make. If you want to upgrade a tank, a warship, or a plane, this is a big effort that takes years. A drone is often 3D printed, so it’s very simple to start iterating on better versions. That’s one problem,” according to Burilkov.
The other problem is a question of production capacity. The use of drones in Ukraine by both sides is just tremendous. “Hundreds of thousands, millions of the smaller ones, thousands of the larger ones, like the Gerons and so on. We don’t really have yet that production capability, and that’s why drone wall, the idea being to be able to build them in such large quantities that they start making a difference,” he added.
The expert added that Europe needs to set up flexible capacities, as the whole industry develops at high speed.
“These things change very quickly. And so it doesn’t make sense to buy drones that are the best there is right now and then stockpile them, because will they still be effective in a few years? It makes more sense to have a dual track where you build up production capability so you can scale production if you need to, but you also stay at the leading edge of innovation when it comes to drones. So you don’t want to commit your defence fully to a system that could be obsolete in a few years, or at least less effective than it is today.”
Burilkov also noted that drone development must be integrated into traditional military developments.
“You cannot just buy drones and then say, okay, now we don’t need tanks and artillery and so on. You still need to take the drones and integrate them as part of traditional capabilities. Otherwise, you end up with a military force that maybe has drones, but is also very fragile because it doesn’t have all this other kind of heavy metal of tanks and artillery working together as combined operations.”
Differing protocols and populated areas in Europe pose obstacles
Another challenge in the Drone Wall will be that every member state has differing policies when it comes to neutralisation of drones.
“In Germany, military training gets disrupted routinely by drones. And then if it’s one drone, you might be able to neutralise it, but maybe you don’t. And if it happens in a populated area, like with these airport intrusions in Denmark, you can’t even start shooting it without risking doing collateral damage.”
Europe can also learn from the incident in Poland, which occurred in early September, when at least 19 drones, allegedly launched from Russia, entered the Polish airspace. Some of them were shot down by military jets, while others crashed after running out of fuel.
“The Poles ended up using jets to shoot them down, which means expensive air-to-air missiles. One of the missiles appears to have missed its target and splashed in a populated area, which is not ideal. And some of the drones, anyway, were not detected and ended up just crashing after running out of fuel. It’s going to be difficult to develop both a unified policy across the EU, including cross-border cooperation, and also a typology of how to respond to different kinds of drones.”
Hungary is no outsider in the Drone Wall
The European Commission seemed reluctant to take Slovakia and Hungary, two eastern flank countries with close ties to Russia, on board with the Drone Wall initiative. After Slovakia joined the group, Hungary also received an invitation as the last country from the region. According to Burilkov, there is divergence between the multi-vector Hungarian foreign policy with ties to Russia and China, and the Western-oriented security policy of Budapest.
“The Hungarian government is fully committed to buying only European military hardware, which is quite unique by European standards. So everything that is in the Hungarian arsenal comes from European producers. And this has, of course, paid off in attracting the European defence industry to Hungary. So Rheinmetall has a large manufacturing initiative in Hungary that produces Leopard tanks. It is also set to produce this new wheeled RCH-155 howitzer. And this creates an interesting situation where, whereas the foreign policy of Budapest might not always be in tune with the rest of the European Union, from the perspective of contributing to European security, the Hungarians do go above and beyond in some ways in that. “
Burilkov said that in terms of the capabilities of the Hungarian military, it is in good shape. And should it come to conflict, they would be able to contribute very meaningfully to the defence of the eastern flank.
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