On Saturday, a pair of jet-powered attack drones soared over the Black Sea and into NATO airspace. Minutes later, Romanian Air Force F-16 fighter jets blew them out of the sky with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, sending the fragments plummeting into the murky waters below. This has become something of the norm for the more easterly members of the alliance.
NATO fighters had to down a suspected Russian UAV over Lithuania on September 15, and were scrambled earlier that month to meet another drone in southern Estonia. The alliance’s air forces have repeatedly demonstrated they can take down these intruders, albeit at great cost. But what if two drones become 20, or 200?
Or, as Ukraine experienced in a single day earlier this year, 999—plus several cruise and ballistic missiles? Newsweek put that question and many others to Lieutenant General Guillaume Thomas, deputy commander of NATO Allied Air Command, alongside senior air defense officers stationed along the alliance’s Eastern flank and an independent air power researcher, to gauge the state of the security bloc’s readiness for modern war. Their answers reveal the scale of the challenge the alliance is facing, and what its military leaders are trying to do about it.
As the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan have demonstrated, cheap, explosive-laden drones can inflict devastating damage and trouble some of the world’s best air defenses. With protests over the cost of living and other economic concerns engulfing cities across Europe, scrambling fighter jets worth millions of dollars to fire missiles worth hundreds of thousands apiece at cheap drones constitutes an obvious financial conundrum. This was not, however, at the top of Thomas’ list of concerns.
"If there is a risk for the population, if there really is a risk for infrastructure, especially civilian infrastructure, we do not hesitate to use fighter jets, even with missiles, to shoot down drones," he told Newsweek. "The purpose of air defense is to protect people, critical infrastructure and military capabilities," Colonel Fredi Karu, Estonia’s Air Force Chief of Staff, added. "The potential damage caused by even a relatively inexpensive unmanned aircraft can be considerably higher than the cost of the drone itself." As most NATO members have worked an increase in defense spending into their budgets, this cost-benefit analysis still just about works out—for now.
The real problem arises when these intermittent interceptions become routine. "Beyond consuming scarce missiles, every interception also strains flying hours, maintenance capacity and aircrew readiness that may be needed against much more sophisticated threats," Arun Dawson, an air power researcher at King's College London's Freeman Air and Space Institute, told Newsweek. Routine they are indeed becoming.
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