Drones and incursions and Russians, oh my!

The loss of confidence by the European NATO countries in the seriousness of the American commitment to its European defense commitments has produced a shift in the foreign policy discussion in Europe to how Europe deals with the potential Russian threat – which is real and present enough in Ukraine – without the cooperation of the United States.

There was a recent incident in which Russian drones reportedly violated Polish air airspace and were shot down by Poland. Romania also detected an incursion by a single Russian drone. And one of three Russian military planes violating Estonian airspace. Both Poland and Estonia are NATO allies and EU members, and both the NATO and EU treaties carry mutual defense obligations, though the EU version has historically been downplayed.

It’s important to keep in mind the various games that countries play around their airspace. I’m not familiar enough with the details to say if such incursions could be described as routine, because they do violate another country’s airspace. But deliberate incursions do happen. Because neighboring powers test each other’s responses to such incursions. They always involve some risk. But I can’t think of a case where such an incursion has ever been the occasion for an actual war.

It's worth recalling the famous Gary Powers incident, in which a secret CIA spy plane was shot down over Russia, causing considerable embarrassment to the Eisenhower Administration in 1960. (1) That was an embarrassing incident. But it didn’t start a war between the US and the Soviet Union. The milder but deliberate incursions into foreign airspace that take place from time to time are not quite so sensitive.

CNN’s report of September 19 on the Polish case includes various assessments of whether the incursion was intentional or not: “intelligence gathered about the drones themselves — their flight pattern and their technical specifications — has been mixed and difficult to interpret.” (2) It quotes an unnamed “congressional official familiar with the intelligence”:

If the incursion was intentional, said the congressional official familiar with the intelligence, it was likely designed to do a number of things: probe Western defenses to gauge the reaction time, learn more about how NATO responds, map the routes used by the West to ship weapons into Ukraine and identify future targets — and of course, antagonize the West. Russia might hope that raising the specter of civilian casualties in a NATO country could create fissures in public support for the war in Ukraine, noted the senior Western intelligence official.

But even if it was unintentional, the senior Western intelligence official said, the episode suggested that Russia is more willing to risk an accidental strike on NATO, either through sloppy targeting or inadequate electronic warfare defenses or something else. That heightens the risk of a dangerous miscalculation that could end in direct conflict.

NATO is having a formal meeting today to discuss the Estonia incident:

NATO allies on Tuesday will hold formal consultations at Estonia's request after the Baltic country said that three Russian fighter jets entered its airspace last week without authorization. Russia’s Defense Ministry denied the accusation.

The intrusion on Friday lasted 12 minutes and was a fresh test of the military alliance’s ability to respond to Moscow's airborne threats after around 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace on Sept. 10. (3)

Gerhard Mangott, a perceptive and critical-minded analyst of Russian politics at the University of Innsbrook in Austria writes the following about the ritual of countries doing the dance of violating each other’s air space to test the other side’s responses:

The right to shoot down: International law grants a state the right to defend itself. An armed military aircraft that enters the airspace without authorization and defies instructions can be considered an enemy or potentially hostile entity. Under certain strict circumstances, the state can therefore also consider a military response, which can go as far as shooting down the plane. However, this is the most extreme and risky measure, which in practice is only used in crisis or war situations. Such a decision must always be weighed against the principle of proportionality and carries the considerable risk of further military escalation. [my emphasis] (4)

In other words, this is something to which European officials and their publics need to pay attention. But they need to be understood in their actual context. A violation of a country’s airspace is not a new Pearl Harbor. Although Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 did involve a considerable violation of US airspace!

Euronews gives a very brief explanation what NATO’s Article 4 is about. That is the topic of Tuesday’s meeting: (5)

Stephan Löwenstein describes the kind of diplomatic signaling involved in such situations:

[W]hen NATO deals with the latest incursions by the Russians … [it] must show a response that shows Moscow, but also the capitals of its own member states, that the defense promise [Article 5 of the NATO treaty] is still credible. Materially, but also with the right words. That Vladimir Putin is deliberately testing this credibility with his constant pinpricks, which are increasing in frequency, is out of the question. The Kremlin's claims always sound the same: they have nothing to do with the matter, they have not deviated from usual flight routes at all, as is now being claimed. And that's how it has been going for years. This is masking, as it already had a method in Soviet times. One should never forget where Putin comes from. (6)

Löwenstein seems to be indulging a bit of Cold War nostalgia there. Now, playing games to test other countries’ response to airspace violations is not an exclusively Soviet feature now taken over by Putin. If Gary Powers were still around, we could ask him for his view on the subject.

Notes:

(1) Barber, Nicholas (2025): 'The aircraft spiralled downwards, tail first': The CIA spy shot down over Russia in 1960. BBC News 08/25/2025. <https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250814-the-cia-spy-shot-down-over-russia-in-1960> (Accessed: 2025-25-09).

(2) Lills, Katle Bo, et. al. (2025): Intel officials are split on whether Russia deliberately flew drones into Poland but agree Putin is getting more aggressive. CNN 09/19/2025. <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/19/politics/intelligence-assessments-russian-drones-poland> (Accessed: 2025-25-09).

(3) Explaining NATO's Article 4 as Estonia seeks consultations over Russian airspace violation. ABC News 09/23/2025. <https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/explaining-natos-article-4-estonia-seeks-consultations-russian-125840887> (Accessed: 2025-23-09).

(4) Mangott, Gerhard (2025): X/Twitter <https://x.com/gerhard_mangott/status/1970059382172885377> (Accessed: 2025-23-09). My translation to English.

(6) Löwenstein, Stephan (2025): Nicht mit nervösem Finger. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 09/22/2025, p 1.