The term “hybrid warfare” can incorporate any number of actions, ranging from subversion to propaganda to intimidation, and in the current climate can easily tip over into what is known as the “gray zone.”
Last year I quoted a definition of what the latter can mean by 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.
And so to the Baltic states, where Russia and its proxy Belarus now appear to be using drones in an effort both to intimidate Latvia and Lithuania and test their defenses.
An unidentified drone crossed into Lithuania from Belarus on July 28, just 18 days after a Russian-made “Gerbera” drone crashed after crossing the same border. The incursions followed a similar incident in September, when an unmanned aircraft entered Latvian airspace from Russia.
While Baltic airspace violations are not new, the context and timing suggest an emerging hybrid campaign to probe, destabilize, and prepare the battlespace ahead of September’s Russian-Belarus “Zapad” military exercise.
“Zapad” is the Russian for “West,” the subtly named annual large-scale military exercise it holds with Belarus, in which the notional adversaries have in the past included villainous Balts.
As CEPA reports, drones:
appear to be deployed by Moscow to test military readiness, evaluate institutional response, provoke political reaction, and sow public anxiety in the Baltic states in line with Russia’s hybrid warfare doctrine…Drone flights can probe sensor coverage, stress-test the Baltics’ command and control, and exploit the potential for public panic or political discord.
It’s an indication of how seriously Lithuania takes this threat that, according to CEPA, “Lithuanian Chief of Defense Raimundas Vaikšnoras called for preemptive interception of drones before they cross into Lithuanian airspace,” a highly risky strategy, for obvious reasons, which, presumably, is why Vilnius is now reviewing plans to toughen its defenses near the border it shares with Belarus. These include “mobile units to jam GPS and other navigation signals, rapidly deployable mobile air defense systems to intercept threats” as well as “legal changes to allow swifter drone neutralization in emergency situations.”
Interestingly:
In 2024, a wave of unidentified balloons entered Lithuanian airspace, which, while initially dismissed as harmless, may also have been part of a hybrid testing campaign — likely aimed at gauging reaction times and public response.
Of course, there is no way that mysterious balloons or drones could be used to fulfill a similar function against the U.S…