Russia launched 19 suicide drones into Polish airspace Tuesday night, prompting a rapid NATO response and marking the first direct NATO military engagement within alliance airspace since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began more than three years ago.
With so many drones involved, what happened last night appears to be no accident. In fact, Trent Telenko posted about "reports that some of the drones over Poland had Polish cell phone SIM Cards" and that planning for the attack/incursion/whatever began in July.
"The Poles were warned about this," according to open-source intel account Visioner, "and there was a high probability that they had entered their networks for testing purposes." Defense Express — a Ukrainian-language site, so it might be a bit biased — claimed that "Russia aimed to spy on and test Poland's air defense readiness, especially against the backdrop of Zapad 2025 [an annual Russia/Belarus military exercise], which will begin in 2 days on Belarusian territory."
This year's Zapad will be the first since 2021.
Moscow has yet to say anything about what happened on Tuesday.
Retired Australian Army General Mick Ryan called it "more than a careless, navigation error from the Russians," and that it would be better as "probing" NATO defenses and reactions. Military analyst Andrew Scheidl called the incursion "a flashy provocation," which was possibly "well-calibrated to focus US and European attention away from Taiwan."
I’ll save that terrifying possibility for after my second cup of coffee, so let's focus on what we know from last night.
NATO jets and helicopters shot down at least three, perhaps four UAVs, believed to be Shahed-class attack drones, and not mere reconnaissance models. At least seven drone wrecks and fragments have been located across eastern Poland, as well as in central Poland as far west as Łódź.
Poland's conservative prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned today that his country "is now in a situation closer to military conflict than at any time since World War II," and called on the West for "full mobilization" against further aggression.
"The procedures worked, the decision-making process was flawless, and the threat was eliminated," he added. At least to this outsider's view, NATO forces — not just Polish — reacted quickly and effectively. According to open sources, Polish F-16s, Dutch F-35s, Italian AWACS surveillance aircraft, and NATO mid-air refueling tankers were all involved in the response.
Rapid combined military effort is made possible only through allied forces training together for a long time. So, whether you were for or against NATO expansion, it seems to be working.
Here's more good news: Warsaw treated the attacks — and this is exactly correct — as a NATO Article 4 issue, not an Article 5 issue. Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty says that member nations "will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened."
Article 5 is the biggie. "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all," or as Bugs Bunny put it, "Of course you realize, this means war."
To borrow from Churchill, “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war” — and today, NATO is talking, not warring.
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