Europe will activate an air defence and drone shield by the middle of next year as part of its plan be ready for “the battlefields of tomorrow”, the European Commission has announced.
With the Russian threat growing, through both drone and fighter incursions in recent weeks, the continent is dramatically upgrading its defences.
“What Europe does for the rest of this decade will shape the security of the continent for the whole century,” the Commission said in a report labelled Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030.
Russia, it stated “poses a persistent threat to European security for the foreseeable future” and the only way to ensure peace through deterrence was to build strong defences.
Drone incursions closed a number of Denmark's airports several times in September, actions that many observers linked to Russia. There were also incidents over Germany. This came two weeks after 19 Russian drones crossed into Poland, followed by further incursions into Romania.
The same month, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered Estonian airspace without permission.
Key to defending against incursions will be a wall of drones patrolling across Europe alongside a network of air defence systems, starting from spring 2026.
The European Drone Defence Initiative will be able to “detect, track and neutralise” invading drone swarms while also able to counterattack with “precision strikes” on ground targets.
“Recent repeated violations of the airspace,” the report said, “have shown the urgency of creating a flexible, agile and state-of-the-art European capability to counter unmanned aerial vehicles”.
Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia’s oil refineries have reportedly taken out about 20 per cent of Moscow’s capacity − showing that they can be highly effective in targeting a country’s critical infrastructure.
Kyiv will be a key partner in the initiative as it has demonstrated an ability to be a world leader in developing cheap and effective drones, said officials.
“This is Europe’s opportunity to learn the Ukrainian way to conduct military tech innovation, and it will be linked to the proposed Drone Alliance with Ukraine,” Brussels said. “Making Ukraine a ‘steel porcupine’ – indigestible to any invaders – is as important for Ukraine’s security as it is for Europe’s,” it added.
The drone shield will be also used to deal with non-defence threats such as border protection, the “weaponisation of migration” and targeting transnational organised crime.
It will be complemented by the “Eastern Flank Watch” that will include air defence missiles, combat air patrols.
The comprehensive border defences need to be completed by 2030 with a “sufficiently strong European defence posture to credibly deter its adversaries and respond to any aggression”. But to get to that readiness in time “Europe needs to move now”.
Work will also accelerate to develop a “European Air Shield” that is fully interoperable with Nato systems and a “European Space Shield to ensure the protection and resilience of space assets” that will also be launched in 2026.
The report concluded that the continent “needs urgent action to address an escalating threat” and admitted that, while defence spending had surged in the last year, building credible defences was “an ambitious endeavour”.
But it asserted that Europe’s “most successful projects, the single market or the euro” had been achieved in phases with “constant political steer to drive the process forward” and that “the same logic must drive the leap in Europe’s defence policy”.
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