Russia Violates Polish Airspace with Drone Incursion Causing Concerns for NATO

Russia’s drone incursion into Poland: A house roof destroyed by Russian drone

Russia has violated Polish airspace by drone incursion causing NATO jets to scramble and shoot down Russian drones. Now there are concerns that the war between Russia and Ukraine could spill into Europe. The incursions are also testing and probing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Associated Press reports, “The incursion, which occurred during a wave of strikes by the Kremlin on Ukraine, and the NATO response swiftly raised fears that the war could spill over — a fear that has been growing in Europe as Russia steps up its attacks and peace efforts go nowhere.”

Indeed the war might be spilling over because this has caused not only jets from Poland but other European countries to shoot down these Russian drones. “Polish F-16 fighter jets, Dutch F-35s, Italian AWACS surveillance planes, and NATO mid-air refuelling aircraft scrambled in an operation to shoot down drones entering Polish airspace from Tuesday evening until morning, officials said,” according to Reuters.

About 20 drones have crossed into Poland after extensive attacks in Ukraine with three shot down. A neighboring country to Russia and Ukraine, Belarus claims that the drone incursions were accidental. International Relations Professor of University of Southern California, Robert English says this had too much coordination to be considered an accident.

“I don’t think it was an accident,” English said. “This was too big and too coordinated and ventured too deep into Polish territory to have been a stray accident. It looks like something that was planned for a purpose.”

Drones were found in the villages of Czosnowka, Wyryki-Wola where a house of struck, Wyhalew, Wohyn, and Zabłocie-Kolonia close to the border with Belarus, as well as Czesniki, a village close to the border with Ukraine. Not only were they found in areas bordering those countries, but in the southeastern part of the country as well in villages like Czyżów, Smyków and Sobotka, close to the border with Czechia.

In the southern part of the country, drone debris was found in the town of Olesno, while drone parts were found in central Poland in fields near the village Mniszków and a town, Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą.

A drone was shot down near a Polish military base. Professor at the Munk School of Global affairs and Public Policy, Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, said that the drones were not real and had no intent to cause actual harm.

“My understanding is that most of the drones had no payload, meaning that they were not intended to actually detonate, that most of the drones were decoy drones. I think that we’re still figuring out more information regarding especially the contents of the drones that were shot down. Not all of the drones were shot down. Only the ones that were seem to be on route to particularly sensitive Polish infrastructure were shot down.”

Now Poland is invoking Article 4 of NATO, which is any member to request dialogues with other members after their territorial integrity, political independence and security is threatened but they have not invoked Article 5 yet, which calls for the assistance from other members after a member`s security is threatened. If NATO were to invoke Article 5, they would need to invest in the technology and production of drones.

“It’s the technology of warfare in the 21st century. They both have to invest in drone technology, drone production for both offense and defense because we can’t rely on the traditional aircraft and anti aircraft missiles, which are so incredibly expensive to protect against waves of drones,” Rathbun said.

NATO sending jets to shoot down Russian drones is expensive because of the air crew operation, maintenance and other factors. If they were to send a missile, it would be significantly expensive.

“It costs more than $50,000 an hour for one sortie to counteract a $10,000 drone. That’s the low cost NATO option.” said English. “The more expensive one is to fire a Patriot missile or other expensive air defense missile and those can cost between half a million and a million each.”

Russia is also trying to get the United States to distance themselves from NATO allies as they have already sent observers to the ZAPAD exercises this year.

“This has continually been Putin’s strategy to try to get the United States separate from the NATO allies and that he continues to work on this,” Rathbun said. “If you look at the observers to the ZAPAD 2025 exercises, the United States sent observers as well as Hungary and Turkey in terms of NATO member states, and that’s notable which NATO member states sent observers.”

Days later, Russian drones were also spotted in Romania and drone debris was found in Latvia. If Russian drones are found in more European countries the response will be more aggressive.

A professor of USC, named as English, said that it will give clarity on Putin`s actions which will further research and development and defenses.

“If this kind of provocation is repeated again and again. Yeah, that could mobilize a more forceful NATO response. In other words, if it happens a second or a third time, then it becomes pretty clear what Putin’s doing,” said English. “And then I think the money and the effort put into anti drone defenses and serious r&d (research and development) and deployment of this new capability will be accelerated.”

Due to these drone incursions by Russia, it has caused NATO to strengthen their defenses. English states that this was a test to probe NATO`s responses and their unity against Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“This was instead a kind of operation probing NATO’s air defenses, probing NATO’s ability to detect and respond to drones. It was a political experiment,” said English. “It was sort of gauging the reaction of NATO on a larger level. To test NATO’s resolve and NATO’s unity.”

If Russia is probing Nato, this is an act toward war and the Presidential Speaker for Russia Dmitry Peskov has already said that NATO is at war with Russia.

“It’s certainly raising the temperature and putting both sides on a more hair trigger posture, a higher level of alert,” said English. “But if we’re a hundred yards away from war with Russia, Putin just moved it five or ten yards closer.”

Instead of 19 to 23 drones, if a significantly higher number of drones had entered Poland or other European countries, NATO really needs to invest more into their defenses when it comes to frontline members. Rathbun said that there have been
Italian, German and Belgian planes responding in addition to Poland`s response.

“That in shows that NATO is prepared for incursions. But if it were hundreds of drones and they actually had payloads which they didn’t, that would not be sufficient,” said Rathbun. “That’s why NATO really needs to invest more in its defensive capacity, particularly in these frontline NATO member states.”