Nato is ready to consider toughening the rules of engagement on its eastern flank to make it easier to shoot down intruding Russian aircraft, one of the alliance’s most senior commanders has said.
In recent weeks drones and fighter jets have violated Polish, Romanian and Estonian airspace and airports and military bases in other countries have been repeatedly disrupted by suspicious drone activity.
Over the weekend there were further suspected drone sightings around the Karup air base in Denmark, Vilnius airport in Lithuania, the Karlskrona naval base in Sweden and the Orland air base in Norway, an important hub for Nato logistics.
Nato said in response that it was stepping up its vigilance around the Baltic Sea with an air defence frigate and a number of unspecified surveillance and reconnaissance systems.
Some of the alliance’s frontline states are now appealing to Nato to take a more decisive step and lower the threshold for the use of force against aerial incursions.
President Rinkevics of Latvia said the time had come for the alliance’s “air policing” mission in the Baltic states, which is built around rotational deployments of fighter jets to local air bases, to be upgraded to full-scale “air defence”.
“We currently rely only on the air policing mission,” Rinkevics told the Estonian broadcaster ERR. “We need a shift in approach from air policing to an actual air defence mission.”
It is understood that this shift would entail not only stationing more Nato air defence systems in the region but also using more assertive rules of engagement. At present the air policing squadrons are primarily tasked with escorting encroaching Russian warplanes out of allied airspace unless they are deemed to pose an unmistakable military threat.
Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the Italian chairman of Nato’s military committee, said that moving from air policing to air defence was “an option” for the alliance but it was too soon to make the decision.
Giuseppe Cavo Dragone of Nato warned that it was too soon for tougher rules
GINTS IVUSKANS/ALAMY
“Considering that these [incursions] are pretty recent events, all of them are still [under] investigation, and of course we still need a fundamental point, which is attribution, I would say it is still premature,” Dragone said after the committee held a meeting in Riga.
“[Air defence] could be an option, depending on what will be the final assessment on what is being investigated right now. I would say that this could be one of the options but not the [only] option.”
Several Nato members have deep reservations about what they see as the risk of overreacting to Russia’s provocations but the alliance has become firmer in its messaging towards the Kremlin over the past week.
After President Trump encouraged allies to shoot down encroaching aircraft, Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary-general, said he agreed that this would be an appropriate response “if so necessary”.
Diplomats from Britain, France and Germany are reported to have subsequently met Russian officials in Moscow and made it clear that these remarks were not empty rhetoric. There have also been signs that some of the recent violations of Nato airspace may have been more serious than was initially acknowledged.
A missile explodes over Kyiv during a Russian drone and missile strike, as Nato debates tougher rules for air defence
VLADYSLAV SODEL/REUTERS
One senior military figure said that when roughly twenty Russian drones flew into Poland on September 10, in one of the most serious incursions on the alliance’s territory for decades, several of them had been heading towards the Lask air base near Lodz, where the United States has stationed four F-35 jets.
The high-ranking officer suggested that had some of the drones not been shot down, Russia would have used the ensuing Zapad wargame in Belarus to threaten the eastern flank.
“It was a test,” he said. “[The Russians] failed it. If they had been successful, then during the Zapad exercise we could have expected very different actions.”
• ‘Brazen’ Russian jets violate Nato airspace in Estonia
The three Russian MiG-31 jets that entered Estonian airspace on September 19 may also have penetrated deeper than previously thought.
Estonia said that the aircraft had flown no more than six miles inside its territory, skirting just inside the border for about 60 miles before they were chased away by locally based Italian F-35s after 12 minutes.
Lieutenant Colonel Gaetano Farina, the commander of the Nato air policing deployment, told the Defense One military news outlet, however, that the MiG-31s had been intercepted over land and that they appeared to have been heading towards Tallinn, the capital. A European diplomat gave a similar account of the incursion to The Times.
John Healey, the UK’s defence secretary, told the Telegraph on Sunday that British-made drones would be deployed on Nato’s eastern flank to create a “drone wall” to protect the alliance from potential Russian attacks.
The programme, Project Octopus, would involve the UK mass-producing drones using “modern manufacturing techniques that we have in this country that they haven’t got”, Healey said, and “supplying them back in the thousands to help Ukraine defend itself”.
The repeated drone sightings over Danish airports and military facilities over the past week have yet to be formally attributed to Russia, although the Danish authorities have said they believe a highly capable state actor was responsible.
On Sunday Denmark said it would ban all civilian drone flights for the coming week as Copenhagen prepares to host a summit of European Union leaders on Wednesday, followed by a meeting of the European Political Community on Thursday.
• Drones flown near military airbases in Denmark ‘part of Putin’s strategy’
Thomas Danielsen, the Danish transport minister, said the measure was necessary to ensure security. “In this way, we remove the risk that enemy drones can be confused with legal drones and vice versa,” he said.
Germany also announced that it would be sending troops equipped with anti-drone technology to help to protect the summits.
The Hamburg, a German air defence frigate that was “buzzed” by low-flying Russian reconnaissance planes over the Baltic Sea a fortnight ago, has also been deployed to Copenhagen.
In the early hours of Sunday Poland again closed its airspace and scrambled interceptor aircraft during a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack on Ukrainian cities but Warsaw said there had been no further intrusions on Polish airspace.
Poland is understood to have stationed about 7,000 soldiers along its eastern frontier with Belarus, which was entirely sealed off during the Zapad drills before several crossings were reopened last Thursday.
• Nato on tenterhooks as Russia starts war games in Belarus
Nato’s frontline states are now working with the EU to erect a “drone wall” along the external borders of Poland and the three Baltic states.
The plans envisage various layers of radar and other detection systems such as acoustic sensors coupled to air defence weapons ranging from machine guns to high-energy lasers and Patriot missiles.
Andrius Kubilius, the EU’s defence commissioner, told a recent event in his native Lithuania that he expected the first elements of this defensive line to be laid down within 12 months.