EU scramble for anti-Russia 'drone wall' hits political, technical hurdles

Highlights:

• Europe seeks better protection from drones after incursions
• Initial proposal faced scepticism from Germany, France
• EU officials broaden scope beyond eastern border
• EU aims to tap into Ukraine's experience in war against Russia
• Defence firms eye revenues from sale of anti-drone systems

Just hours after some 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was time for Europe to build a "drone wall" to protect its eastern flank.

Drone incidents over airports in Denmark and Germany in the following weeks reinforced European leaders' view that the continent urgently needs better protection against such threats.

But the "drone wall" proposal remains in flux, according to more than half a dozen officials and diplomats familiar with internal EU deliberations who spoke to Reuters about the project.

"Our capabilities are really, for the time being, quite limited," said European Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, who is playing a leading role in fleshing out the proposal.

Kubilius told Reuters the EU would need to draw heavily on Ukrainian expertise, honed over nearly four years countering waves of Russian drones.

The drone project is a test of the EU's ambitions to play a greater role in defence – traditionally the preserve of national governments and NATO – as well as Europe's ability to take more responsibility for its own security, as demanded by US President Donald Trump.

The Commission, the EU's executive body, has been trying to win over southern and western European governments, which argued the original idea was too focused on the bloc's eastern border when drones could pose a threat across the whole continent.

The proposal is also caught up in a power struggle over who should control major European defence projects, with Germany and France wary of handing power to the Commission, diplomats say.

Some EU officials questioned the name "drone wall", arguing it implies a false promise of security when no system will be able to repel every drone.

To try to win more support, the Commission has broadened the original concept – from an integrated thicket of sensors, jamming systems and weapons along the eastern border to a continent-wide web of anti-drone systems.

As first reported by Reuters on Tuesday, the Commission plans to switch to the term "European Drone Defence Initiative" in a defence policy "roadmap" to be unveiled on Thursday.

If it goes ahead, the project would be a bonanza for makers of anti-drone systems – from startups in the Baltic states to bigger defence industry players such as Germany's Helsing and Rheinmetall.

The Commission has not said how much the proposal would cost but geopolitical consultancy RANE said it could generate billions of euros in orders.

But without broad support from European governments, the plan will struggle to secure access to EU funding, experts said.

"The path to realisation remains long and fraught with constraints," said Matteo Ilardo, RANE's lead Europe analyst, pointing to big challenges "in terms of cost, scale and cross-border integration". 

JETS VS DRONES

Baltic countries, along with Poland and Finland, pitched the idea of a "drone wall" to the European Commission last year, a spokesperson for Estonia's border guard told Reuters.

The countries applied for funding from an EU civilian border management fund, with the aim of deploying sensors and drones to combat people smuggling, the spokesperson said.

The project initially failed to gain traction at EU level.

But the idea evolved into a more defence-focused concept after Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov gave a presentation to von der Leyen in April in Brussels on how Ukraine counters Russian drone attacks, EU officials said.

The Russian incursion into Polish airspace on September 9 highlighted how ill-prepared EU countries currently are to tackle the threat posed by swarms of drones, adding to the sense of urgency.

NATO deployed F-35 and F-16 fighter jets, helicopters and a Patriot air defence system collectively worth billions of dollars to respond to Russian Gerbera drones - based on Iranian Shahed models – that cost a tiny fraction of the price.

"A 10,000-euro drone shot down with a million-euro missile - that's not sustainable," Kubilius told a defence conference in Brussels on Tuesday.

FRENCH, GERMAN SCEPTICISM

Once the Commission has fleshed out its proposal, EU governments will decide whether to give it the green light.

Diplomats say smaller countries see more value in having the Commission as a coordinator on such projects. But big countries such as France and Germany, which are used to handling large procurement initiatives themselves, want to retain control.

Neither German Chancellor Friedrich Merz nor French President Emmanuel Macron has so far embraced the proposal.

At an EU summit in Copenhagen earlier this month, Macron said the threat of drones was "more sophisticated, more complex" than the idea of a drone wall suggested.

Countries wanting to cooperate on an anti-drone system can use national budgets and the EU's 150 billion euro SAFE loans scheme for defence projects. But if the EU gives the project the status of a European Defence Project of Common Interest, countries involved would have access to a broader range of EU funding.

The EU would also have to agree on who would run the project – member countries, the Commission, another EU body or some combination of all of those.

MACHINE GUNS, CANNONS AND ROCKETS

Drawing on lessons from Ukraine, the sensors for the project would likely include cameras, acoustic systems that can detect drone engine noise, specialist radars and radio-frequency detectors, according to interviews with more than a dozen EU officials and industry executives.

"We need to have a layered system that is able to detect, classify, engage and eliminate the target," said Leet Rauno Lember, chief operating officer of Estonia's Marduk Technologies.

Weapons to counter any attack would include a mix of machine guns and cannons, rockets, missiles and interceptor drones – which can slam into enemy drones or explode close to them – as well as electronic jamming systems and lasers, they said.

Artificial Intelligence is already being used to help identify and target incoming drones and its use in the field is expected to grow, industry executives said.

"There is no one-size-fits-all solution. There is no single technology silver bullet," said Dominic Surano, director of special projects at Nordic Air Defence, a Stockholm-based firm that has developed a ground-based mobile interception system.

Defence experts said the project would require constant updates as drone warfare is evolving rapidly, with each side constantly adapting to changes made by the other.

It is a story of "counteraction against counteraction," said Taras Tymochko, a specialist in interceptor drones at Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian charity that has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment for the country's armed forces.

Tymochko said Ukrainian forces are experienced users of interceptor drones, which destroy targets by exploding next to them. But they had to evolve quickly.

The first Ukrainian interceptor drone to destroy a Shahed in early 2025 stopped being effective after four months because the Russians realised they could outrun it by increasing the Shahed's speed from 170 kph to more than 200 kph, Tymochko said.

Now interceptors need to be able to fly between 30 and 50 kph faster than enemy drones to catch them, he said.

Tymochko said training and time on the job was also vital. Top interceptor pilots succeeded because of their experience more than reliance on automated guidance systems, he said.

FIRMS LINING UP

Defence and tech companies have swiftly embraced the drone wall concept, pushing their products as part of the solution.

Some – such as Germany's Alpine Eagle and Quantum Systems - have even drawn up their own blueprints of how layers of ground and air-based systems would work.

Rheinmetall, Germany's largest defence company, said a major challenge is detecting small drones and defending against swarm attacks, which have become a feature of the war in Ukraine.

"Cannon-based drone defence must be the focus, as this is the only cost-effective measure," the company said. Rheinmetall said it received recent orders from Germany, Denmark, Hungary and Austria for its mobile Skyranger system, which combines sensors and a cannon.

Drone producer Nordyn Group argued that using drones to intercept others was a cost-effective solution. Ossian Vogel, a co-founder of the German company, warned against developing a "zoo" of different systems that soldiers would have to learn to use.

Many of the systems being proposed are already on the market, so the EU and its member countries would have to determine which systems to buy, where to use them and how to link them all together, officials and industry executives said.

Any such setup would have to fit into NATO's broader air and missile defence systems, experts said.

"The EU and NATO need to work hand in glove on this one," said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official who is now Secretary General of the European Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association.

Some officials and executives, like Jan-Hendrik Boelens, CEO of Alpine Eagle - which has developed an airborne early-warning and interception system - said the EU idea could be "up and running within a year if the political will is available". Others are more sceptical.

"We are not talking about a concept which will be realised within the next three or four years ... (or) even more," German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told a security forum in Warsaw last month.