What about Asian countries? African Countries? Does the EU have better drone detection? Does the EU overreact due to the current tension levels within the EU?
the whole article reads like a FUD-laced sales pitch for gathering public support for an expensive anti-drone tech. There's even a whole section talking about how it will be a 'financially controversial question'. The article starts with fearmongering around the drones not having explosives 'yet'.
Maybe there are normal or slightly elevated levels of drone incursion due to idiots with access to cheap drones. Maybe the drone-wall vendor working with their partners within the EU saw an opportunity to exploit fear to gather support
edit: I tried to get data for the EU similar to what the FAA produces. I failed. Chatgpt says there "maybe" reason to believe in a recent spike in sightings. I am maybe overly cautious about trusting that a spike is indeed happening and it has hostile intent. I am reminded of the mass delusion in New Jersey of the 'drone sightings' that ended up being nothing interesting.
I would not rule out China out either. Let’s not forget some of their recent state backed exploits as well as the “weather” balloon that flew over America.
why is China flying drones over Italy? is Italy a big backer of Taiwanese independence?
it is almost certainly Russia, or NATO running drills.
also don't underestimate idiots and assholes in the same way that incoming flights to airports still have to deal with people shining laser pointers at them on an irregular but not uncommon basis
Not a bad overview of the situation! Worth it for some of the questions about what is actually efficient and not just technically effective. Especially at this scale.
> "The aggressor", he concludes, "will observe, adjust, repeat – until they get through".
it's just security, digital or not. sun tzu's art of war is timeless and widely applicable (including outside of the military or even security domains) for a reason.
One thing that is particularly annoying: the lack of communication from the governments/police about the status of the investigation, or lack thereof.
Side question: How likely are autonomous reconnaissance drones today?
I'd expect them to be impervious to traditional jamming.
I could imagine a pair of drones, a few km apart, communicating by laser line-of-sight, where the reconnaissance one acquires data, send it to the nearby drone, that one would use it to confirm data and do something else with it (aka, spotter and actor).
That's why I don't understand why there isn't a more aggressive response to flying drones illegally near airports. IMO they should just be shot down.
Actually some years they were very proudly showing birds of prey that they had trained to do just that. Whatever happened to that?
After 9/11 there was a huge worldwide shift in e.g. airplane security due to the threat of terrorism, but now there's drones out there they can fly into planes or that can drop bombs they're doing... what? Mentioning it in the news?
> That's why I don't understand why there isn't a more aggressive response to flying drones illegally near airports. IMO they should just be shot down.
This isn't allowed in most countries, so they usually also have no equipment for this. Some countries seem to have changed the laws recently for this case and building up on defence more openly now. Which also leaves space for speculations if this wasn't maybe also sometimes a false-flag-operation.
> Actually some years they were very proudly showing birds of prey that they had trained to do just that. Whatever happened to that?
They are trained for small slow commercial drones, those which are around the same size as the bird, or smaller. Military long-range-drones are usually a bit bigger and faster, meaning the bird could probably for simply reason of physic not doing much.
This probably is also a main problem here, that most drone-defences in the last years were developed against private actors, not military threats.
> but now there's drones out there they can fly into planes or that can drop bombs they're doing... what? Mentioning it in the news?
It's never been a real threat so far, so nobody really was working on it seriously. There is an endless amount of theoretical threats, you can't protect everything against all of them, you have to go case by case. But reacting takes time. This is going for just some months(?), and still not even a real threat, as nobody knows anything for real (as far as we know). But many things seem happening in secret, outside the public view.
If they're detectable they can be targeted; counter-drones for sure (which are also very fast), and there's automated rifle targeting systems specifically designed to target and shoot down drones (e.g. https://www.smart-shooter.com/). I'm confident that a system of automated turrets on and around an airbase could be set up. If shooting a gun near civilians is an issue, these don't even need to shoot bullets.
But of course, electronic countermeasures / jamming should be attempted first, so they can be recovered intact and traced.
I think the issue is that you can't really use counter-drones or automatic weapon systems at an airport due to the threat they pose to the airports operations (automatic rifle systems at civilian airports, which are the ones targeted, wouldn't fly in Germany).
The same is true for jamming, which sounds like a bad idea at an active airport, although targetted jamming will probably work. Not sure how quickly such a system can be deployed however.
So that means you need to wait until operations have paused at which point the drone has already disappeared.
I fell like tracking the drone to identify the operator with strong zoom cameras mounted on the airport might work though. At least some commercial systems seem to use this approach: https://www.dedrone.com/industry/airports
Jammers work pretty well. I would expect most large airports would have a defense response. They would have the tools setup to one instantly identify and track said drones come within the space and two have the tools like the portable jammers to “shoot” it down. These tools are not that expensive and exist from multiple vendors.
I would have expected this to be table stakes at running large busy airports.
On publics airports? Where planes have to land all the time? Can they be pinpointed exactly on one specific target without disturbing the others? And this is assuming there even is a remote-control to jam.
Yup. At least in the prior case this year the airports all shutdown. I see no reason you should not be able to quickly react to a scenario like this? Most European airports have some sort of federal response in or near the airport anyway. Not that big leap to think you should be able to jump on it.
Civilian airports can "shut down" by telling all traffic to (glibly) find other things to do. The traffic is still around. How resistant is all this traffic to jamming? and what kind of jamming? You can probably experiment with that around an isolated military airport. Perhaps. "Perhaps" because you still have civilian traffic in line of sight. I don't know that it's an easy decision to screw around with jamming around a crowded civilian airport.
What you can certainly double down on is tracking and close to the ground monitoring. And it would be surprising if this did not give results (over hundreds of sightings) as to who is launching them and recovering some hardware. Drones fall off pretty easily and it might be hard to repeatedly recover drones without getting caught if there is a surge of police around.
How quickly can you deploy a portable jammer? The drone might have disappeared until you have done so already. So you definitelly need automated systems for detection and targetting, which will probably take time until they are widely available.
They make hand helds that can be used without human LOS with something like 3km range. You don’t definitely need automated systems but obviously that would be probably more bullet proof.
It is but I would hope these entities are trying at least something and those jammers are cheap.
In Paris they developed an electronic barrier wall for drones. Yes maybe these are autonomous enough that when the link is cut they continue on their mission but I think something is better than nothing.
if the downward facing radar sees them then it's already too late -- that drone gonna hit something or it's dropped its payload.
a couple of RPG sized rounds dropped from 10000 ft up could easily close runways and shutdown an airport for hours. hell just being there and being UFO could lead to all sorts of flight re-routing and chaos
Once a drone has been spotted notifying the correct person and getting the drone started would take a few minutes I assume.
Furthermore you can't really deploy a drone at an airport while it is still active, which is the reason they are banned from operating there in the first place.
From the other comments I believe that tracking to identify the operator and launch site together with automated targetted jamming are the most effective solution. I don't know if such a system exists already and if it is quick enough to react without interferring with airport operations.
This is not an issue for the Government though. They can change the laws. That takes time and due process of course. But thats what the German government is doing [0]
I dunno if calling them "mysterious" is really helpful in this case. Just shoot them down if they get close, that should be the response in a wartime scenario too. Plus, given it's in civilian areas, they can use the expensive laser defense systems to do that.
The mysteriousness is the main point of the article. These drones aren’t identifiable. Across dozens of incursions this year alone, no one has taken any drone down or identified where they’re launching from or returning to in spite of all the advanced NATO satellite imagery and aerial surveillance that can identify individual people on the ground.
I was there for that, ended up getting the eurostart instead, still can't believe that it was basically all for nothing and we still have no information about it really.
I still haven’t seen any specifics on the type of drones spotted at those airports. Is the other side just sending random people with cheap FPV drones? Or are they flying Shaheds around airports? I could take my 6” FPV drone and go buzz the tower at a nearby international airport, if I wanted. It costs less than 500€ for the entire kit and with ELRS and high power analog VTx you can do it from kilometers away and run before they catch you. Obviously it’s illegal as fuck.
It's thought that it's Russian illegal agents doing this. A lot of them locals recruited online. Really cheap ops done by really cheap people, using cheap and deniable gear.
It makes sense. In the Netherlands, young people (<18) have been recruited for all kinds of stuff by organized crime; bank account money muling as part of laundering operations, laying bombs, getting drugs / other smuggled stuff out of shipping containers in ports, that kind of thing. They target these because for them, a few hundred € is a huge sum, and the legal system is very forgiving to underage people, assuming they even get caught.
I heard it’s a mix. Suggestible local people on Telegram are coaxed to launch civilian stuff at a time and place. This clouds the sensor data of the true launches.
I don’t know if we’ve seen Shahads since 10 September, but note that Shahads can be ship-launched as well.
Have they been conclusively spotted? With evidence? Sorry I only skimmed the article. Until there is, I’m going to keep believing it’s some sort of mass delusion like UFO sightings. Not because I think some sort of drone attack is particularly unlikely, but because these sorts of mass delusions are evidently very common - like happened in New Jersey.
9 September is probably where you want to start. Intentional swarm of military drones into NATO. Shahads shot down, no question about a Russian plan to test reactions along the perimeter.
Since then, coordinated launches of screens of smaller civilian drones. I don’t think we’ll get hard numbers, but I’ve heard that NATO is more interested in ground-detection of GPS and satellite uplink jamming.
So the question now is: how are some civilians coordinating within NATO countries, and how are they getting drones that can jam?
Don't they show up on radar? I have no reason to doubt the detection of drones around airports and other infrastructure, especially given they already have enforced drone bans and therefore have installations specifically designed to detect and track drones.
If we see a war between Russia and the EU, we're going to have to deal with them learning from Israel and using the same idea of decentralised drone hubs attacking military and civilian targets across the entire continent. We're woefully underprepared to deal with something like this. Western Europe still thinks that if a war breaks out, it'll be tanks and soldiers going into the Baltic states, and we'll crush them with our advanced arsenal. It'll be more like when Russia took eastern Ukraine. A hard push, then months of digging in as they proceed to genocide the Baltics, gaslight the West into thinking it'd be easier and safer to just hand over the Baltics without a big fight and wage asymmetric warfare across Europe and severely hamper any military response by hitting the logistic chains at every point.
The EU military leaders are watching Ukraine closely (as is any other competent military leader anywhere in the world) and trying to figure out how they will handle this problems. The EU is also talking to Ukraine military leaders and brainstorming solutions that Ukraine is trying in real time (not all military leaders are, but a lot of countries outside of the EU are). The EU is also designing new weapons/systems with the current situation in mind, it is likely that these (whatever they are - this is classified but I can say it with confidence anyway because it is so obvious there is no way they are not doing something) will be ready before Russia attacks.
> Western Europe still thinks that if a war breaks out, it'll be tanks and soldiers going into the Baltic states, and we'll crush them with our advanced arsenal.
Drones are not for conquering, but destruction. We see this in Ukraine now, where Drones are not making the whole war, but are just one gear of the machinery. And Western leaders know this, they are preparing Drones, but refitting the western machinery takes time. Probably one reason why they seem busy to bind Russia in Ukraine.
> Yes, and we have plenty of infrastructure to destroy. It's a target rich environment.
Yes, but how is that relevant? Everything is always open for terror. Russia itself is not safe either. Or are you assuming Russia is out for pure blind destruction? Degrading themselves to become lousy terrorists? Just spreading destruction for no reason?
I would assume they at least will have some aim and reasoning behind their targets, which would mean they will come with soldiers and tanks, and conquer land, or destroy the highest profile-targets. In the first case, they will have very limited resources to spare for attacks on middle European targets. For the second case, you only need to focus your defence on those targets.
> I've seen zero indication that this is true.
May you are following the wrong sources? Building up drones-defence is in progress for a while now. Whether it's going well is a different story, but I would assume that they will not talk very openly about those things for obvious reasons.
Do you really think after years of crushing defeats in battle and sanctions, that they have the money or soldiers to fight the EU? If they did, they would have taken over Ukraine by now.
Now if China gets involved? It's a different story.
If China gets involved directly (e.g. not through supplies) then the conflict will escalate; no party wants to escalate this, and for years now this has been a tight-rope proxy war of sorts, where Europe and the US try to support Ukraine as much as possible without being directly involved. Likewise, Russia has been getting supplies and people from their allies.
the key difference is that China and Russia have direct borders and land beefs; they may well be rivals, but it's easy for China to feed them tech and learn from their mistakes while getting a serious cut (25% or more) on oil.
discount at the gas station while a potential rival hollows itself out and turns into the Canada of China -- a mostly empty resource hub that follows your lead
It's Schroedinger's Red Army: Too incompetent and weak to conquer a third-rate power, but prepared and willing o attack NATO-coordinated Western Europe any day now.
Such is propaganda: You need to keep the population in fear so they will follow your policies.
Don't underestimate lack if willingness of EU folks to see their dead, or have hospitals or kindergardens bombed by russians on purpose, just like they routinely do in Ukraine. Maybe it can bring on more resistance but I wouldn't hold my breath, european population right now is weak.
Also russia has firm footing in EU politics already - for example every single far right group is parroting russian propaganda even when directly aimed against given country. It took decades to build to sow division in whole EU and they are using it now to their fullest.
[EDIT] Gotta love the downvotes, I am just describing what I see across whole EU including my own country. Would love some constructive feedback but this is clearly a touchy topic for many folks
If you read what top generals in various countries in the EU are saying(especially on the East side), their main concern is that Russia is making thousands of brand new tanks, cannons, support vehicles......and they are all going into storage. Very few are actually getting sent to Ukraine. If these guys are saying that large scale conflict with Russia seems almost inevitable within few years.....what qualifications do I have to disagree with them? Obviously I don't want this to be true - far from it.
I'm also curious, why would Russia continue to send thousands to their deaths while holding back supplies and stuff? Unless it's intentional to appear weaker than they are.
But I don't see how that would work, unless the US is intentionally witholding intel from their allies - the US, since the invention of spaceflight, has had spy sattelites trained at Russia and they would see large accumulations and transports of tanks and tank parts.
Ok I spent the last hour looking for this interview and I honestly can't find it - the closest I can get to the source is this article saying that Russia is building a strategic reserve of tanks:
But it's not the one I read which was literally a general saying "they are building tanks and not sending them to the front - why if not to fight with NATO eventually".
> Russian factories are working at full speed, producing new tanks and repairing those that have been dusty for years," writes "Le Figaro". The French daily refers to its sources and data from independent study groups. On the other hand, experts also point to the fact that this year the losses of the Russians have decreased - this year it was only 200 tanks. According to the newspaper, this may be due to the fact that the participation of these vehicles in the fighting at the front has been reduced. This, in turn, is the result of greater use of drones.
This actually strikes me as fairly plausible: it suggests that Russia has decided that tanks are not ideally suited for the current drone war in Ukraine. So they're continuing to ramp up production, but aren't (at this point) sending them to the front.
This doesn't necessarily mean that they have a long-term plan to invade NATO, however. I can think of many other scenarios where it would be in Russia's strategic interest to have a large modernized tank force in reserve.
I mean of course drones would be a massive problem for western forces as they have never faced that kind of threat at scale.
But at the same time the Russian army has suffered dramatic attrition in Ukraine, especially in anti-air capabilities which used to be USSR's specialty and which western analyst feared it would allow the Russians to perform wide anti access on the Baltic's while they would quickly take over the Suvalki corridor and the whole Baltic states soon after.
With limited maneuvering capability left to quickly overwhelm local land armies and a significantly diminished air defense asset, I think the Russians would just lose the sky very quickly and then be unable to supply their ground forces.
And I really don't think Putin wants to lose a quick conventional war and end up with just the nuclear deterrence as his only card so I'm not too worried about him attacking EU directly. (But then again it made little sense to attack Ukraine in the first place yet he did it no matter what, so who knows…)
(Had the Ukrainian army collapsed and the 2022 campaign gone as planned by the Russian command, then the prospects would have been extremely grim for the Baltic states and the European Union as a whole. We Europeans collectively owe a lot to the Ukrainians).
On the topic of what Putin wants, I’m increasingly swayed that domestic politics limit the choices he’s given. I wonder how the same siloviki but a different leader would perform.
On the topic of a wide drone attack coinciding with land invasion, I think (rightly or wrongly) the drone attack will be attributed to Russia early. Even though the life of a Russian soldier is approximately the same as a drone, it’d be very helpful for Russia to manifest the drones in support of some other origin of the troops.
History shows periods of opaque infighting within a closed circle of security barons. The west did not know Khrushchev was positioned for power until that ring met with Eisenhower for arms talks, and Khrushchev was the one standing next to Eisenhower at the buffet.
I think the West now expects a complex and probably mortal fight for succession, with the Patruchevs being favored right now.
I’ve heard people talking about factions: one ensuring Putin’s physical security; another ensuring a continuity of their power so that oligarchs and siloviki are indivisibly secure.
Only if every car has only one person - once you start getting 2 or more people in a car, driving starts to win[0] (and that's discounting the heavy multiplier you get from things like coaches and buses.)
Right, but you're missing the part where in the real world, nobody on the plane is going to carpool with other passengers they've never met, they're going to drive themselves in their own car, because people are not automatons that instinctively select the most climate-friendly option.
We shouldn't be comparing the most optimistic outcome in the world as you'd prefer it to be that could happen as a result of the flight being cancelled, we should be comparing the most probable outcome in the world as it actually exists.
Those problems have never stopped the environmental movement before, so why would they now. (they could have supported nuclear a couple decades ago and we would be in much better shape environmentally)
The problem with the environmental movement is that it's not about saving the environment, it's about virtue signalling and chasing an internal locus of control over a phenomenon that is very strictly determined by factors outside of anyone's abilty to meaningfully influence.
If you make a bold claim like that I hope you have the sources to back it up. News outlets spreading misinformation is a criminal act; it was in the UK's 2003 Communications Act [0] and has been updated in the 2023 Online Safety Act [1], with some people already having been convicted [2] for spreading misinformation.
Exactly, there's a difference between spreading information that is factually incorrect and reporting (or not reporting) information in a way that is misleading.
The fact that these drones are only appearing in NATO aligned countries makes it seem pretty obvious to me that it's one of two possibilities.
1) Russian sabre-rattling
2) NATO countries running "secret" drills in public in anticipation of 1)
The UFO community is of course running with a third option that doesn't warrant any seriousness.
If you take into account the silence from officials and politicians then 2) seems more likely.
What I don't understand is... is it really only NATO aligned countries?
Maybe I just didn't read the article well enough.
In the USA we get over 100 drone sightings near airports per month. ( https://www.faa.gov/uas/resources/public_records/uas_sightin...? ) ( we are certainly 'NATO aligned', but it's the easiest source of drone incursion records I could find )
What about Asian countries? African Countries? Does the EU have better drone detection? Does the EU overreact due to the current tension levels within the EU?
the whole article reads like a FUD-laced sales pitch for gathering public support for an expensive anti-drone tech. There's even a whole section talking about how it will be a 'financially controversial question'. The article starts with fearmongering around the drones not having explosives 'yet'.
Maybe there are normal or slightly elevated levels of drone incursion due to idiots with access to cheap drones. Maybe the drone-wall vendor working with their partners within the EU saw an opportunity to exploit fear to gather support
edit: I tried to get data for the EU similar to what the FAA produces. I failed. Chatgpt says there "maybe" reason to believe in a recent spike in sightings. I am maybe overly cautious about trusting that a spike is indeed happening and it has hostile intent. I am reminded of the mass delusion in New Jersey of the 'drone sightings' that ended up being nothing interesting.
I would not rule out China out either. Let’s not forget some of their recent state backed exploits as well as the “weather” balloon that flew over America.
why is China flying drones over Italy? is Italy a big backer of Taiwanese independence?
it is almost certainly Russia, or NATO running drills.
also don't underestimate idiots and assholes in the same way that incoming flights to airports still have to deal with people shining laser pointers at them on an irregular but not uncommon basis
Not a bad overview of the situation! Worth it for some of the questions about what is actually efficient and not just technically effective. Especially at this scale.
> "The aggressor", he concludes, "will observe, adjust, repeat – until they get through".
Reminds me a lot of digital sec.
it's just security, digital or not. sun tzu's art of war is timeless and widely applicable (including outside of the military or even security domains) for a reason.
One thing that is particularly annoying: the lack of communication from the governments/police about the status of the investigation, or lack thereof.
Side question: How likely are autonomous reconnaissance drones today?
I'd expect them to be impervious to traditional jamming.
I could imagine a pair of drones, a few km apart, communicating by laser line-of-sight, where the reconnaissance one acquires data, send it to the nearby drone, that one would use it to confirm data and do something else with it (aka, spotter and actor).
The way the german government reacts to this makes it pretty easy for any lone actor to do state level damage.
That's why I don't understand why there isn't a more aggressive response to flying drones illegally near airports. IMO they should just be shot down.
Actually some years they were very proudly showing birds of prey that they had trained to do just that. Whatever happened to that?
After 9/11 there was a huge worldwide shift in e.g. airplane security due to the threat of terrorism, but now there's drones out there they can fly into planes or that can drop bombs they're doing... what? Mentioning it in the news?
> That's why I don't understand why there isn't a more aggressive response to flying drones illegally near airports. IMO they should just be shot down.
This isn't allowed in most countries, so they usually also have no equipment for this. Some countries seem to have changed the laws recently for this case and building up on defence more openly now. Which also leaves space for speculations if this wasn't maybe also sometimes a false-flag-operation.
> Actually some years they were very proudly showing birds of prey that they had trained to do just that. Whatever happened to that?
They are trained for small slow commercial drones, those which are around the same size as the bird, or smaller. Military long-range-drones are usually a bit bigger and faster, meaning the bird could probably for simply reason of physic not doing much.
This probably is also a main problem here, that most drone-defences in the last years were developed against private actors, not military threats.
> but now there's drones out there they can fly into planes or that can drop bombs they're doing... what? Mentioning it in the news?
It's never been a real threat so far, so nobody really was working on it seriously. There is an endless amount of theoretical threats, you can't protect everything against all of them, you have to go case by case. But reacting takes time. This is going for just some months(?), and still not even a real threat, as nobody knows anything for real (as far as we know). But many things seem happening in secret, outside the public view.
How do you expect to shoot them down? They are small and very quick and disappear shortly after appearing.
If they're detectable they can be targeted; counter-drones for sure (which are also very fast), and there's automated rifle targeting systems specifically designed to target and shoot down drones (e.g. https://www.smart-shooter.com/). I'm confident that a system of automated turrets on and around an airbase could be set up. If shooting a gun near civilians is an issue, these don't even need to shoot bullets.
But of course, electronic countermeasures / jamming should be attempted first, so they can be recovered intact and traced.
I think the issue is that you can't really use counter-drones or automatic weapon systems at an airport due to the threat they pose to the airports operations (automatic rifle systems at civilian airports, which are the ones targeted, wouldn't fly in Germany).
The same is true for jamming, which sounds like a bad idea at an active airport, although targetted jamming will probably work. Not sure how quickly such a system can be deployed however.
So that means you need to wait until operations have paused at which point the drone has already disappeared.
I fell like tracking the drone to identify the operator with strong zoom cameras mounted on the airport might work though. At least some commercial systems seem to use this approach: https://www.dedrone.com/industry/airports
Jammers work pretty well. I would expect most large airports would have a defense response. They would have the tools setup to one instantly identify and track said drones come within the space and two have the tools like the portable jammers to “shoot” it down. These tools are not that expensive and exist from multiple vendors.
I would have expected this to be table stakes at running large busy airports.
> Jammers work pretty well.
On publics airports? Where planes have to land all the time? Can they be pinpointed exactly on one specific target without disturbing the others? And this is assuming there even is a remote-control to jam.
Yup. At least in the prior case this year the airports all shutdown. I see no reason you should not be able to quickly react to a scenario like this? Most European airports have some sort of federal response in or near the airport anyway. Not that big leap to think you should be able to jump on it.
Civilian airports can "shut down" by telling all traffic to (glibly) find other things to do. The traffic is still around. How resistant is all this traffic to jamming? and what kind of jamming? You can probably experiment with that around an isolated military airport. Perhaps. "Perhaps" because you still have civilian traffic in line of sight. I don't know that it's an easy decision to screw around with jamming around a crowded civilian airport.
What you can certainly double down on is tracking and close to the ground monitoring. And it would be surprising if this did not give results (over hundreds of sightings) as to who is launching them and recovering some hardware. Drones fall off pretty easily and it might be hard to repeatedly recover drones without getting caught if there is a surge of police around.
How quickly can you deploy a portable jammer? The drone might have disappeared until you have done so already. So you definitelly need automated systems for detection and targetting, which will probably take time until they are widely available.
They make hand helds that can be used without human LOS with something like 3km range. You don’t definitely need automated systems but obviously that would be probably more bullet proof.
A 3km range seems pretty low looking at the size of e.g. Frankfurt Airport.
The bigger issue I assume is probably that even if you react very quickly the drone might be already gone already anyway.
It is but I would hope these entities are trying at least something and those jammers are cheap.
In Paris they developed an electronic barrier wall for drones. Yes maybe these are autonomous enough that when the link is cut they continue on their mission but I think something is better than nothing.
These tools are widely available.
Stand-by drone-intercepting drones?
Tracking them is a need first and foremost. How about a down-facing radar on top of the Aviation Control Tower?
if the downward facing radar sees them then it's already too late -- that drone gonna hit something or it's dropped its payload.
a couple of RPG sized rounds dropped from 10000 ft up could easily close runways and shutdown an airport for hours. hell just being there and being UFO could lead to all sorts of flight re-routing and chaos
I think the issue is response time.
Once a drone has been spotted notifying the correct person and getting the drone started would take a few minutes I assume.
Furthermore you can't really deploy a drone at an airport while it is still active, which is the reason they are banned from operating there in the first place.
I was about to counter your first part with automatic detection and drone launching, but your second point makes sense.
From the other comments I believe that tracking to identify the operator and launch site together with automated targetted jamming are the most effective solution. I don't know if such a system exists already and if it is quick enough to react without interferring with airport operations.
And in many cases its simply not legal to start shooting at unidentified drones in an urban environment.
This is not an issue for the Government though. They can change the laws. That takes time and due process of course. But thats what the German government is doing [0]
[0]: https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/gesetzgebungsverfahren/DE...
I dunno if calling them "mysterious" is really helpful in this case. Just shoot them down if they get close, that should be the response in a wartime scenario too. Plus, given it's in civilian areas, they can use the expensive laser defense systems to do that.
The mysteriousness is the main point of the article. These drones aren’t identifiable. Across dozens of incursions this year alone, no one has taken any drone down or identified where they’re launching from or returning to in spite of all the advanced NATO satellite imagery and aerial surveillance that can identify individual people on the ground.
The problem with this is, if you shoot and miss, the bullet goes somewhere. Airports are near cities, and there tend to be people "down range".
nah most airports ain't. not all of em mind you, but usually you keep people away
these projectiles aren't going to travel 9km unless you're shooting off SAMs or other serious AA
i'd be more worried about FOD on the runways getting sucked into an engine or popping the tires of service vehicles
Is this like that time we closed Gatwick for 3 days because of a collective delusion?
Every news report I read about this stuff has at best /r/ufos level of uselessly vague photography.
I was there for that, ended up getting the eurostart instead, still can't believe that it was basically all for nothing and we still have no information about it really.
I still haven’t seen any specifics on the type of drones spotted at those airports. Is the other side just sending random people with cheap FPV drones? Or are they flying Shaheds around airports? I could take my 6” FPV drone and go buzz the tower at a nearby international airport, if I wanted. It costs less than 500€ for the entire kit and with ELRS and high power analog VTx you can do it from kilometers away and run before they catch you. Obviously it’s illegal as fuck.
Civilian drones most of the time.
It's thought that it's Russian illegal agents doing this. A lot of them locals recruited online. Really cheap ops done by really cheap people, using cheap and deniable gear.
I have heard about this happening in Russia but not the other way around. Can you please elaborate?
As of October, Russian efforts via Telegram are associated with the seemingly-spontaneous swarms around places like The Hague.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-cyberespionage-gig-...
It makes sense. In the Netherlands, young people (<18) have been recruited for all kinds of stuff by organized crime; bank account money muling as part of laundering operations, laying bombs, getting drugs / other smuggled stuff out of shipping containers in ports, that kind of thing. They target these because for them, a few hundred € is a huge sum, and the legal system is very forgiving to underage people, assuming they even get caught.
I heard it’s a mix. Suggestible local people on Telegram are coaxed to launch civilian stuff at a time and place. This clouds the sensor data of the true launches.
I don’t know if we’ve seen Shahads since 10 September, but note that Shahads can be ship-launched as well.
So this is happening in the EU? I only heard about such cases happening in Russia. Where did you read about this?
It’s well documented, Latvia, Poland, and it takes time to build the case so there are probably more.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/may/04...
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/01/16/we-need-eyes-and-ear...
Have they been conclusively spotted? With evidence? Sorry I only skimmed the article. Until there is, I’m going to keep believing it’s some sort of mass delusion like UFO sightings. Not because I think some sort of drone attack is particularly unlikely, but because these sorts of mass delusions are evidently very common - like happened in New Jersey.
9 September is probably where you want to start. Intentional swarm of military drones into NATO. Shahads shot down, no question about a Russian plan to test reactions along the perimeter.
Since then, coordinated launches of screens of smaller civilian drones. I don’t think we’ll get hard numbers, but I’ve heard that NATO is more interested in ground-detection of GPS and satellite uplink jamming.
So the question now is: how are some civilians coordinating within NATO countries, and how are they getting drones that can jam?
Don't they show up on radar? I have no reason to doubt the detection of drones around airports and other infrastructure, especially given they already have enforced drone bans and therefore have installations specifically designed to detect and track drones.
before ukraine it was aliens
(It was drones then too.)
If we see a war between Russia and the EU, we're going to have to deal with them learning from Israel and using the same idea of decentralised drone hubs attacking military and civilian targets across the entire continent. We're woefully underprepared to deal with something like this. Western Europe still thinks that if a war breaks out, it'll be tanks and soldiers going into the Baltic states, and we'll crush them with our advanced arsenal. It'll be more like when Russia took eastern Ukraine. A hard push, then months of digging in as they proceed to genocide the Baltics, gaslight the West into thinking it'd be easier and safer to just hand over the Baltics without a big fight and wage asymmetric warfare across Europe and severely hamper any military response by hitting the logistic chains at every point.
The EU military leaders are watching Ukraine closely (as is any other competent military leader anywhere in the world) and trying to figure out how they will handle this problems. The EU is also talking to Ukraine military leaders and brainstorming solutions that Ukraine is trying in real time (not all military leaders are, but a lot of countries outside of the EU are). The EU is also designing new weapons/systems with the current situation in mind, it is likely that these (whatever they are - this is classified but I can say it with confidence anyway because it is so obvious there is no way they are not doing something) will be ready before Russia attacks.
> Western Europe still thinks that if a war breaks out, it'll be tanks and soldiers going into the Baltic states, and we'll crush them with our advanced arsenal.
Drones are not for conquering, but destruction. We see this in Ukraine now, where Drones are not making the whole war, but are just one gear of the machinery. And Western leaders know this, they are preparing Drones, but refitting the western machinery takes time. Probably one reason why they seem busy to bind Russia in Ukraine.
> Drones are not for conquering, but destruction.
Yes, and we have plenty of infrastructure to destroy. It's a target rich environment.
> And Western leaders know this, they are preparing Drones
I've seen zero indication that this is true. Do you have sources that we're in any way preparing for a large-scale drone war?
there was literally an article just the other day about the US buying a million drones and building the capacity to continue that level of To&E
> Yes, and we have plenty of infrastructure to destroy. It's a target rich environment.
Yes, but how is that relevant? Everything is always open for terror. Russia itself is not safe either. Or are you assuming Russia is out for pure blind destruction? Degrading themselves to become lousy terrorists? Just spreading destruction for no reason?
I would assume they at least will have some aim and reasoning behind their targets, which would mean they will come with soldiers and tanks, and conquer land, or destroy the highest profile-targets. In the first case, they will have very limited resources to spare for attacks on middle European targets. For the second case, you only need to focus your defence on those targets.
> I've seen zero indication that this is true.
May you are following the wrong sources? Building up drones-defence is in progress for a while now. Whether it's going well is a different story, but I would assume that they will not talk very openly about those things for obvious reasons.
Do you really think after years of crushing defeats in battle and sanctions, that they have the money or soldiers to fight the EU? If they did, they would have taken over Ukraine by now.
Now if China gets involved? It's a different story.
If China gets involved directly (e.g. not through supplies) then the conflict will escalate; no party wants to escalate this, and for years now this has been a tight-rope proxy war of sorts, where Europe and the US try to support Ukraine as much as possible without being directly involved. Likewise, Russia has been getting supplies and people from their allies.
the key difference is that China and Russia have direct borders and land beefs; they may well be rivals, but it's easy for China to feed them tech and learn from their mistakes while getting a serious cut (25% or more) on oil.
discount at the gas station while a potential rival hollows itself out and turns into the Canada of China -- a mostly empty resource hub that follows your lead
It's Schroedinger's Red Army: Too incompetent and weak to conquer a third-rate power, but prepared and willing o attack NATO-coordinated Western Europe any day now.
Such is propaganda: You need to keep the population in fear so they will follow your policies.
They don't need money or soldiers, but drones.
How would they get drones without money or soldiers?
Oil still flowing
Yup.
China, Turkey, and India are main buyers of Russian oil at the moment: https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-...
Don't underestimate lack if willingness of EU folks to see their dead, or have hospitals or kindergardens bombed by russians on purpose, just like they routinely do in Ukraine. Maybe it can bring on more resistance but I wouldn't hold my breath, european population right now is weak.
Also russia has firm footing in EU politics already - for example every single far right group is parroting russian propaganda even when directly aimed against given country. It took decades to build to sow division in whole EU and they are using it now to their fullest.
[EDIT] Gotta love the downvotes, I am just describing what I see across whole EU including my own country. Would love some constructive feedback but this is clearly a touchy topic for many folks
If you read what top generals in various countries in the EU are saying(especially on the East side), their main concern is that Russia is making thousands of brand new tanks, cannons, support vehicles......and they are all going into storage. Very few are actually getting sent to Ukraine. If these guys are saying that large scale conflict with Russia seems almost inevitable within few years.....what qualifications do I have to disagree with them? Obviously I don't want this to be true - far from it.
I’ve never heard anyone say this. Source?
I'm also curious, why would Russia continue to send thousands to their deaths while holding back supplies and stuff? Unless it's intentional to appear weaker than they are.
But I don't see how that would work, unless the US is intentionally witholding intel from their allies - the US, since the invention of spaceflight, has had spy sattelites trained at Russia and they would see large accumulations and transports of tanks and tank parts.
Ok I spent the last hour looking for this interview and I honestly can't find it - the closest I can get to the source is this article saying that Russia is building a strategic reserve of tanks:
https://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/7%2C114881%2C3206584...
But it's not the one I read which was literally a general saying "they are building tanks and not sending them to the front - why if not to fight with NATO eventually".
Thanks. This is useful (in English translation):
> Russian factories are working at full speed, producing new tanks and repairing those that have been dusty for years," writes "Le Figaro". The French daily refers to its sources and data from independent study groups. On the other hand, experts also point to the fact that this year the losses of the Russians have decreased - this year it was only 200 tanks. According to the newspaper, this may be due to the fact that the participation of these vehicles in the fighting at the front has been reduced. This, in turn, is the result of greater use of drones.
This actually strikes me as fairly plausible: it suggests that Russia has decided that tanks are not ideally suited for the current drone war in Ukraine. So they're continuing to ramp up production, but aren't (at this point) sending them to the front.
This doesn't necessarily mean that they have a long-term plan to invade NATO, however. I can think of many other scenarios where it would be in Russia's strategic interest to have a large modernized tank force in reserve.
I'm not convinced by your conclusion.
I mean of course drones would be a massive problem for western forces as they have never faced that kind of threat at scale.
But at the same time the Russian army has suffered dramatic attrition in Ukraine, especially in anti-air capabilities which used to be USSR's specialty and which western analyst feared it would allow the Russians to perform wide anti access on the Baltic's while they would quickly take over the Suvalki corridor and the whole Baltic states soon after.
With limited maneuvering capability left to quickly overwhelm local land armies and a significantly diminished air defense asset, I think the Russians would just lose the sky very quickly and then be unable to supply their ground forces.
And I really don't think Putin wants to lose a quick conventional war and end up with just the nuclear deterrence as his only card so I'm not too worried about him attacking EU directly. (But then again it made little sense to attack Ukraine in the first place yet he did it no matter what, so who knows…)
(Had the Ukrainian army collapsed and the 2022 campaign gone as planned by the Russian command, then the prospects would have been extremely grim for the Baltic states and the European Union as a whole. We Europeans collectively owe a lot to the Ukrainians).
On the topic of what Putin wants, I’m increasingly swayed that domestic politics limit the choices he’s given. I wonder how the same siloviki but a different leader would perform.
On the topic of a wide drone attack coinciding with land invasion, I think (rightly or wrongly) the drone attack will be attributed to Russia early. Even though the life of a Russian soldier is approximately the same as a drone, it’d be very helpful for Russia to manifest the drones in support of some other origin of the troops.
Could you expand a bit on what you mean by your first paragraph?
not that guy, but to quote someone else from HN
something to the effect of: "Russia has a way out of this war. They can release some or all of Ukrainian territory, take their ball and go home.
Putin however has no way out of this war, as dictators cannot look weak and there was already the revolt from Prigozhn.
There is no reality where he can just walk away without facing repercussions.
He could try to repress his way to security but the Tsars tried that too..."
History shows periods of opaque infighting within a closed circle of security barons. The west did not know Khrushchev was positioned for power until that ring met with Eisenhower for arms talks, and Khrushchev was the one standing next to Eisenhower at the buffet.
I think the West now expects a complex and probably mortal fight for succession, with the Patruchevs being favored right now.
I’ve heard people talking about factions: one ensuring Putin’s physical security; another ensuring a continuity of their power so that oligarchs and siloviki are indivisibly secure.
[flagged]
Right, because nothing screams "I love the environment" like replacing one five hour flight with 200 48 hour internal combustion car road trips.
Only if every car has only one person - once you start getting 2 or more people in a car, driving starts to win[0] (and that's discounting the heavy multiplier you get from things like coaches and buses.)
[0] https://terrapass.com/blog/carbon-footprint-of-driving-vs-fl...
Right, but you're missing the part where in the real world, nobody on the plane is going to carpool with other passengers they've never met, they're going to drive themselves in their own car, because people are not automatons that instinctively select the most climate-friendly option.
We shouldn't be comparing the most optimistic outcome in the world as you'd prefer it to be that could happen as a result of the flight being cancelled, we should be comparing the most probable outcome in the world as it actually exists.
Those problems have never stopped the environmental movement before, so why would they now. (they could have supported nuclear a couple decades ago and we would be in much better shape environmentally)
The problem with the environmental movement is that it's not about saving the environment, it's about virtue signalling and chasing an internal locus of control over a phenomenon that is very strictly determined by factors outside of anyone's abilty to meaningfully influence.
What about trains, though?
People aren't going to do what you want them to do, they're going to do what they want to do, and in the USA, that's almost never trains.
Just what we need. They stopped Nuclear energy from taking over in the 70s and 80s, why not destroy Air travel too?
Further realization — Russians don’t have to fly drones or sabotage things, they could just “encourage” eco warriors.
I mean they would still be using drones but the drones are just human.
Suddenly wondering if there is any history of Russians/Soviets “sponsoring” the groups who were after Germany shutting down its nuclear reactors…
[flagged]
If you make a bold claim like that I hope you have the sources to back it up. News outlets spreading misinformation is a criminal act; it was in the UK's 2003 Communications Act [0] and has been updated in the 2023 Online Safety Act [1], with some people already having been convicted [2] for spreading misinformation.
[0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/179
[2] https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/news/derbyshire/news/news/s...
Exactly, there's a difference between spreading information that is factually incorrect and reporting (or not reporting) information in a way that is misleading.
A few people have great information on drones. Why would they become sources for RT?
Oh hai Donald.