Written by Giustiniano Cesare Vasey
Edited by Michael O’Daly
Supervised by Kevin Whitehead, Elise Alsteens
On September 18, 2025, EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius advocated the creation of a “drone wall” along the Union’s eastern border and convened a meeting of the EU defence ministers to address the mounting threat. The conference, held on September 26 and chaired by the Commission, gathered ministers from Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Finland, alongside Ukraine and NATO as an observer (Liboreiro, 2025). A couple of weeks earlier, in her State of the Union speech, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen had already promoted an EU-backed drone wall to “heed the call of our Baltic friends”, defining it as “the bedrock of credible defence” (Von der Leyen, 2025, para. 11).
The current urgency has arisen following recent airspace violations by Russian drones in the territories of Poland and Romania. Two weeks ago, Warsaw recorded at least nineteen drone incursions, some travelling hundreds of kilometres into Polish territory before crashing or being shot down, causing temporary airport closures across the country. Reportedly, five drones were on a direct flight path towards a NATO base before being intercepted by allied fighter jets (Kayali, 2025). While Poland has registered airspace violations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including deadly accidents, the current circumstances “brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two”, said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (Easton & Lukiv, 2025, para. 3). Indeed, the incident in Poland represents the largest cross-border incident on NATO soil since the start of the war in 2022 (Moulson & Wilks, 2025). A couple of days later, Romania’s air force detected a Russian drone entering its airspace before disappearing again off the radar (Casey & Boyd, 2025). Additionally, on Friday the 19th, drones were spotted above Copenhagen and Oslo airports, causing both to shut down for hours. The perpetrators have not been identified, but the scale and precision of the attack suggested a “capable actor”, meaning that Russia “could not be ruled out”, according to Danish PM Mette Frederiksen (Schumacher, 2025, para. 4).
These drone incursions into EU and NATO territory, particularly the one in Poland, have highlighted serious shortcomings in anti-drone air defence capabilities. Reports suggest that the alliance managed to shoot down approximately three drones out of the almost twenty detected. Ukrainian forces are usually able to down 80-90 per cent of them even in large attacks (Kayali, 2025). Moreover, the drones taken down by NATO, mainly composed of cheap materials such as wood and foam, were targeted by multi-million euro weapon systems, like F-35 fighter jets. Such an issue had already been raised in a briefing between NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and EU ambassadors in Brussels, where it was concluded that the Alliance would not be able to regularly engage with drones by using F-35s (Kayali, 2025).
The war in Ukraine serves once again as a compelling example. Ukrainian forces currently use both electronic countermeasures to jam communication and navigation signals and thousands of interceptor drones. Additionally, Ukrainian soldiers have been recently equipped with innovative counter-drone rifle rounds, which are able to produce a shotgun-like spread that can damage drones up to fifty metres away (Mittal, 2025).
The “drone wall” EU officials have been pushing for recently refers to a cooperative effort announced earlier this year between Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Estonian Defence Industry Cluster, 2025). So far, at the heart of the drone wall project lies Eirshield, a “multilayered drone defence system” developed by Estonian and Latvian companies DefSecIntel and Origin Robotics (Desmarais, 2025). The proposed system integrates radars, cameras, and radio frequency detectors to identify and categorise hostile drones. At that point, artificial intelligence is used to automate decisions on whether to jam, block or intercept incoming aircraft with other drones. Notably, the cost-per-use of this anti-drone defence system is in the order of tens of thousands of euros, compared to the multi-million cost-per-use of conventional air defence weaponry (Desmarais, 2025). While the project received considerable funding from local governments, the Commission had denied a €12 million drone wall funding proposal in August (Desmarais, 2025). However, the unprecedented magnitude of drone incursions this month has put Europe on “maximum alert” (Liboreiro, 2025, para. 12).
After the latest meeting on Friday, the 26th, the EU agreed to move forward with the drone wall plan (Rankin, 2025). Discussions are expected to continue in the following weeks, including an informal summit of EU leaders in Copenhagen in the coming days (Liboreiro, 2025). The prospect of a new eastern drone wall in Europe is gaining traction. Nevertheless, its realisation will depend on the willingness of the interested states, the EU’s involvement, and the magnitude of future airspace violations, in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Beyond immediate security concerns, the initiative raises crucial questions about Europe’s defence architecture and the drone wall’s compatibility with NATO, traditionally considered the exclusive guardian of European defence. As the Union expands its defence ambitions through programmes like Readiness 2030 and its €150 billion low-interest loan plan (Liboreiro, 2025), the drone wall could mark an important step toward a more autonomous European security posture.
Bibliography
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