{"id":536347,"date":"2025-10-29T22:46:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T22:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/536347\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T22:46:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T22:46:21","slug":"in-europe-the-problem-is-deterrence-not-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/536347\/","title":{"rendered":"In Europe, the problem is deterrence, not drones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since multiple Russian drones<\/a> crossed into Poland last month, European leaders have expedited the idea of a \u201cdrone wall\u201d<\/a> and rushed to discuss the need to invest<\/a> in countering drones. <\/p>\n

But when it comes to European defense, Russian attack drones are not the true problem. The problem is an erosion of the pillars of nuclear and conventional deterrence.<\/p>\n

This erosion has myriad causes, but the impact is that Russia feels emboldened to test NATO\u2019s political will by, among other things, flying attack drones at or over a NATO nation. Over-investing in a \u201cdrone wall\u201d would be a waste of precious resources that would be better spent on other defense priorities<\/a>. It would not deter Russia, and perhaps most importantly, it wouldn\u2019t even defend against pressing vectors of drone-use violence that Europe is likely to face<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Europe and the United States should be working with Ukraine<\/a> and investing in research and development to improve what are currently a host of inadequate options for countering uncrewed aerial systems. But instead of focusing on defending against drones from the east, Europe should invest in its ability to strike back at Russia and take steps to demonstrate a willingness to use these capabilities. <\/p>\n

Russian attack drones are not the problem<\/p>\n

A Shahed-type drone launched from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad could theoretically range any European capital (except possibly Lisbon, depending on the variant), but Russia has been able to threaten all of Europe with ballistic and cruise missiles for a long time. It can have an effect more cheaply, but a Shahed\u2019s characteristics make it relatively easy to track, and something launched from Kaliningrad or much of western Russia would be traceable. <\/p>\n

The issue is not that Russia is now attacking Europe for the first time. This has been occurring at least since the 2007 cyber-attacks against Estonia<\/a>. And it isn\u2019t that Russia now has access to a technology that allows it to attack all of Europe from the air. That\u2019s been true since the 1950s<\/a>. And it\u2019s not that this is the first time Russia has violated NATO airspace. That occurred even before Russia invaded Ukraine<\/a>, to include a NATO nation shooting down a Russian airplane<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So, what is the issue?<\/p>\n

Erosion of the pillars of deterrence is the problem<\/p>\n

It boils down to the nature of deterrence and the current geopolitical environment. Deterrence works either by denial (that is, demonstrating to your enemy through your capabilities that they will not be capable of achieving their objective) or by punishment (your enemy may be able to hit you, but you will hit back so hard that it won\u2019t make their initial strike worth the punishment). <\/p>\n

Since 1949, the premise of NATO has been grounded in deterrence by punishment; that\u2019s the implicit threat of NATO\u2019s Article 5 that if anyone (but let\u2019s be honest, it meant the Soviet Union) attacked a NATO nation, the U.S. military, backed by the U.S. nuclear arsenal, would make them regret doing so. <\/p>\n

This has been augmented over time through varying levels of conventional forces meant to also provide a measure of deterrence by denial in order to reduce reliance on \u2014 and thereby, ideally, the possibility of \u2014 nuclear escalation. Conventional denial with a backstop of nuclear punishment by the U.S. and, to a lesser but still important extent, the United Kingdom and France.<\/p>\n

While the Trump administration has made repeated statements that it will remain in NATO and continue to provide a backstop of nuclear punishment in support of Article 5, some in Russia and in Europe have begun to question the reliability of U.S. nuclear deterrence<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Regardless of whether this is true, belief and perception are the reality when it comes to deterrence. Thus, the most important and unanswerable question is whether Moscow believes the U.S. remains committed to NATO Article 5. And the fact that this is even a question at all indicates an erosion of deterrence.<\/p>\n

\"\"The guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely launches Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles in response to increased Iranian-backed Houthi malign behavior in the Red Sea. (MC1 Jonathan Word\/U.S. Navy)Europe needs to invest in its ability to punch back<\/p>\n

Though it may be desirable to maintain capabilities that allow for solely defensive responses to Russian aggression for political reasons, Europe needs to stop thinking that it can continue to focus on defense alone. <\/p>\n

While Europe should not actively seek to escalate a conflict, the reality right now is that no technology exists anywhere in the world to create a cost-effective \u201cdrone wall.\u201d<\/a> This is especially true when you are looking at a country that is at war (Russia) attacking countries that still think they are at peace (Europe) and will therefore have more stringent restrictions on their counter-drone rules of engagement. <\/p>\n

Europe and the U.S. should be working together to invest in the development of more cost-effective methods to counter drones. But as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. <\/p>\n

This is precisely the rationale behind Ukraine\u2019s desire to acquire Tomahawk cruise missiles from the U.S. The Tomahawk would help Ukraine defend itself against Russian air attacks by enabling the Ukrainian Armed Forces to damage the archer instead of trying to shoot down the arrows<\/a>. And when it comes to dealing with an aggressor state that is actively working to assess your military capabilities and your political will to use them, as Russia currently is doing to Europe, the capabilities are useless as a deterrent if the enemy doesn\u2019t believe you will use them. <\/p>\n

Russia would hesitate to fly its planes in NATO airspace if it believed those planes would get shot out of the sky. It would think twice about launching Shaheds at NATO if it believed every factory used to manufacture a Shahed would get wiped out.<\/p>\n

So, what should Europe do right now?<\/p>\n

Europe should continue to spend money on rapidly recapitalizing its conventional forces to ensure it can hit back at Russia. Some nations are already doing this through their investments in long-range cruise strike capabilities<\/a>. By investing in military capabilities that would allow it to strike Russia, Europe likely would bolster the nuclear deterrence pillar as well. This is because investing in these capabilities would demonstrate that European nations are meeting their NATO Article 3 requirement to provide for their own national defense, thereby strengthening the transatlantic relationship.<\/p>\n

If Europe focuses on its willingness and ability to punch back at Russia, it won\u2019t have to worry that much about Russian planes and drones crossing borders to attack it. <\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not to say that Europe shouldn\u2019t worry about drones at all. It just means that Europe is worrying about the wrong thing if it\u2019s focused on a \u201cwall\u201d that faces east. Instead, Europe should be bolstering its ability to counter the use of drones by covert actors (think Ukraine\u2019s Operation Spiderweb<\/a> but aimed at energy facilities) or violent non-state actors (like using a \u201cdragon drone\u201d<\/a> to drop thermite on a crowd of people, leading to terror and panic).<\/p>\n

Drones are a problem. Russia is a problem. But the real problem is that if NATO nations allow themselves to be distracted by a few drones flying from the east, they risk missing the bigger picture when it comes to both Russia and drones. <\/p>\n

Ann Marie Dailey is a policy researcher at Rand, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. She formerly served as the senior adviser for international security affairs and the senior adviser on Russia strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The views in this article are her own and do not represent the official position of Rand, the Atlantic Council or the U.S. Army Reserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since multiple Russian drones crossed into Poland last month, European leaders have expedited the idea of a \u201cdrone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[5606,5607,173286,173287,2595,2000,299,5187,391,332,173285,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-536347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-circulated-defense-news","9":"tag-defense-news","10":"tag-deterrence","11":"tag-drone-wall","12":"tag-drones","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-european","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-russian-drone-attacks","19":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115459889623144988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}