If Russia is responsible, the implicit threat contained in these drone flights is too obvious to need spelling out.
The “gray zone” grows ever more treacherous.
As a reminder, “gray zone” describes an action or series of actions that are not quite war, and not quite not war either.
Writing about this phenomenon in July last year, I borrowed a definition from Clementine G. Starling, the deputy director of the Forward Defense program and a resident fellow at the Transatlantic Security Initiative:
The gray zone describes a set of activities that occur between peace (or cooperation) and war (or armed conflict). A multitude of activities fall into this murky in-between — from nefarious economic activities, influence operations, and cyberattacks to mercenary operations, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns. Generally, gray-zone activities are considered gradualist campaigns by state and non-state actors that combine non-military and quasi-military tools and fall below the threshold of armed conflict. They aim to thwart, destabilize, weaken, or attack an adversary, and they are often tailored toward the vulnerabilities of the target state. While gray-zone activities are nothing new, the onset of new technologies has provided states with more tools to operate and avoid clear categorization, attribution, and detection — all of which complicates the United States’ and its allies’ ability to respond.
I added this:
Two key reasons why waging a war in the gray zone is so effective for the aggressor are contained in the last part of that last sentence. The first is the question of proof, and the second, which applies even if there is proof of who was responsible, is how to respond. NATO is not (nor should it) go to war over an arson attack or even an assassination of, say, a business executive [a plot had been in the news]. But how does it hit back?
And so to drones. The current wave in Europe has now come with an extra twist.
Drones have been spotted at airports and military installations across Germany over the past two days, Bild newspaper quoted a confidential police report as saying, suggesting sightings this week at Munich Airport were the tip of the iceberg.
Dozens of flights were diverted or cancelled at Munich Airport on Friday after both runways were closed following the second drone sighting in two days. Operations resumed, with delays, on Saturday morning.
Some of those sightings will, as in the case of (traditional) UFO flaps, be cases of social contagion or, to put it more kindly, confirmation bias. Every light in the sky becomes a flying saucer or, in this case, a drone. Equally, some of the drones could be harmless, the work of hobbyists at play. Nevertheless, much of the current wave, most notably the recent incursions into Poland, seems obviously Russian-sourced, and there are some receipts (in the form of wreckage) to back that up.
Drones can fly a very long way, but it seems unlikely (or at least it ought to be unlikely) that drones would fly from Western Russia or Belarus to Munich (a distance of over 1,000 miles) without being detected. If that assumption is correct, it would suggest that the drones were sent from Germany.
And if that were the case, it raises some nasty possibilities. If Russia is responsible, the implicit threat contained in drone flights launched from within Germany is too obvious to need spelling out. And if Russia or its pals are not responsible, that is hardly reassuring.
The Europeans are discussing a “drone wall” along the EU’s eastern border (which, despite the terminology, is not some kind of Maginot construction), but, although this has been agreed in principle there is a debate as to who should pay for it. Some countries, such as Italy and Greece, feel that this is more of an issue for states much closer to Russia than they are, a short-sighted view to take, and not just because drones can fly a long way. If drones start killing people in, say, Poland or the Baltic or Nordic regions, Italy will not be immune from the consequences.
But then — see Munich — there is the question of drones launched against a NATO country from within its own borders and/or the sea. Italy has a lot of coastline. How to defend against that? As is obvious from the Russo-Ukrainian war, drones have changed the nature of warfare — and not just warfare. It is also obvious that no-one yet has devised a method to head off the threat that they pose, especially, ironically, in countries that are not at war. Any defense system will probably only be a damage limitation exercise, but it is bound to be an improvement on what there is now.
The [EU] lacks detection tech to easily pick up UAVs, and when NATO jets downed three Russian drones over Poland last month, they used multi-million-dollar missiles to knock down Russian Gerberas costing about $10,000 each.
Ukraine has been rapidly developing drone and anti-drone capabilities, and the West is beginning to partner with it in this area. It is also clear that the private sector is looking at the broader opportunity drones could represent. For example, a Swedish tech start-up, Nordic Air Defence, has developed the Kreuger 100, “a lightweight, battery-powered drone interceptor.” I have no idea how well it will work (and, given Sweden’s financial history, Kreuger was an interesting name to pick), but that NAD has attracted early round financing (and some buzz) is somewhat encouraging. And so was an article in the Daily Telegraph in which it was explained that the Kreuger 100 is a low-cost mini-missile “which uses infrared sensors to hunt down hostile drones and ram them out of the sky at high speed. [This makes] it much safer to use in civilian areas than explosive projectiles.” That matters when the drones are over facilities such as airports or, say, targeting residential areas.
The U.S. has no reason to be complacent. Alaska apart, we may be a long way from Russia, but this is a very large country, with a very long coastline. Last year’s great New Jersey drone wave may really have been an UFO-style “flap,” a fuss about nothing, but whatever the truth of it, it did not leave the impression that we are on top of our drone defense game. I hope I am wrong.