EUR: How Europe’s responding to Russian drone threats

BLUF: Europe still relies on much costlier fighter jets and missiles, even as it tests out new Ukrainian counter-drone concepts. Meanwhile, civil authorities are beginning to adopt electronic countermeasures against cheap drones causing havoc at airports.

The French military gets more bang for its buck than the United Kingdom by focusing on the capabilities it needs most, per a new report.

The European Commission announced measures to reduce Europe’s dependence on Chinese raw materials critical for defense. These include export controls on scrap permanent magnets as well as a coordinated stockpiling scheme.

Romania and Ukraine have been squabbling about Sea Baby naval drones.

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Military and civilian authorities in Europe are testing new drone countermeasures, including sensors, interceptor drones and electronic warfare (EW) weapons. 

For now, NATO still relies on rockets that were designed to shoot down military jets and missiles. These are effective, but disproportionately expensive assets against low-cost drones.

In September, Dutch F-35 fighter jets fired Sidewinder missiles to down Russian fixed-wing drones in Polish airspace. 

Gerbera drones are cheap plywood and polystyrene imitations of the Iranian Shahed.

They are a fraction of the cost of the missiles used to shoot them down. “At a minimum, you’re talking ten-to-one, if not more,” a NATO military officer told The Arsenal.

Consulting firm PwC estimates the difference could be even higher. Tomasz Kłosowicz, who leads a PwC team advising civilian and military clients on counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS), told The Arsenal that a Gerbera costs around $10,000 (€8,570) to make, whereas Sidewinders start at $600,000. 

And none of this even considers the costs of operating, maintaining and supporting the F-35s that carry the munitions.

Patriot surface-to-air missiles, Kłosowicz added, are another drone defense. They are even more expensive than Sidewinders.

“You’re not going to think about that [cost] when you’re faced with a threat to the safety of alliance inhabitants,” the NATO officer said. 

In the long run, though, “that can’t be the way that you deal with this.”

NATO allies are starting to test more cost-effective counter-drone technologies. 

These include using networked ground-based sensors to detect hostile drones and to deploy lower-cost countermeasures, including interceptor drones, as well as rockets and gun trucks. The officer added that several variations are under consideration, and assuming drone incursions continue, the new systems will someday go up against the real thing.

The officer pointed to the example of Latvia: in September, Latvian defense minister Andris Sprūds announced on national television that the country will use acoustic sensors to detect drones’ sound signatures. 

Latvia has also hosted NATO counter-drone exercises to test radar, acoustic sensors, infrared and optical cameras, radio detectors, fixed and mobile jammers, radio stations and spectrum analyzers.

Other EU countries have also been shopping for counter-drone technology in recent months.

In November, Belgium agreed to buy interceptor drones from Origin Robotics for an undisclosed sum, as part of a €50 million plan to counter malicious drone use in the country.

Last week, The Arsenal reported that Estonia had opened a €460 million tender (over €330 per Estonian) for drone detection equipment, including acoustic sensors and radio locators. There and in other NATO countries in the region, including Lithuania and Poland, there’s talk of building a ‘drone wall’ to prepare for Russian incursions. 

Lithuanian efforts appear to be stalled. Tomas Milašauskas, CEO of Lithuanian military drone startup RSI Europe, said the Estonian tender reflects Tallinn’s own initiative. Lithuania’s defense procurement chief was sacked months ago and hasn’t been replaced, stymying national defense purchasing.

“The drone wall concept is still very much a political one,” he told The Arsenal, referring to the lack of coordinated action among the participating countries. “I hope that drone interceptors will be part of the drone wall,” he said, calling them “effective” for intercepting fast kamikaze drones like the Shahed.

Interceptor drones typically slam into – or explode near – the target drone, disabling both. Milašauskas said RSI Europe has developed an interceptor that can catch the target in a net, which reduces the risk to people on the ground.

That type is not ready for sale, but the company’s other drones have been sold to Ukraine and Lithuania—as well as other NATO members he declined to specify.

After nearly four years of war in Ukraine, “NATO is not prepared for the drone threat,” Milašauskas said. “We were not expecting to really fight—and I think many countries in Europe still do not expect to really engage in combat.”

The NATO military officer, whom The Arsenal agreed not to identify, acknowledged the criticism, saying it can be difficult to convey a sense of urgency to alliance members far from the eastern flank.

In countries like Germany, the officer added that civil regulations made drone testing difficult until fairly recently, even for the military.

German aviation laws were overhauled in 2017, before which even the military and the police needed to obtain prior permission to fly drones. The revision introduced broad exemptions for public authorities, at the same time as regulating civil use on the basis of a drone’s weight. 

Electronic warfare devices are significantly cheaper than interceptors, and have their place in drone defense. 

But getting police forces to adopt RF jammers is “a process,” Kłosowicz said. The technology is also subject to legal restrictions, which limit its availability. 

The EU’s Radio Equipment Directive requires that devices that emit radio waves do not cause harmful interference. The directive has a general exemption for equipment designed exclusively for use in public security or defense, but such use still needs to be regulated by national law.

Those regulations need to define who should have access to it, Kłosowicz said, along with who’s responsible for countering particular drone threats—whether military or police.

“The military can’t solve all the world’s problems,” the NATO officer said, “but of course, from a military standpoint, some of the airports are dual-use or military airports.”

Any longstanding counter-drone protections will need to use a mix of EW and interceptors. Many drones now come equipped with technologies that make it resistant to jamming or other similar types of electronic warfare.

“There is no chance you will stop a Shahed drone with electronic warfare,” Kłosowicz told The Arsenal. “You have to shoot it down, like they do in Ukraine.” 

In Ukraine, cheaper quadcopter drones have also been fitted with fiber-optic cable spools to defeat RF jammers, though these haven’t been seen on NATO territory yet, Kłosowicz said.

RF jamming is effective against the nuisance consumer-grade drones seen over airports and other critical infrastructure. 

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France makes more efficient use of its defense budget than the UK does, the author of a new report told The Arsenal, by focusing on the capabilities it needs most.

“I would say it probably gets better value for money from its defense budget just because they’re slightly more disciplined about what capabilities they do and don’t focus on,” Alex Chalmers said.

The researcher is the author behind “Fixing UK defence procurement,” a report for the Centre for British Progress, a London-based think tank.

He cites the British Army’s Ajax armored vehicle as one example. The government is considering scrapping its entire fleet after reports that it is making soldiers who use it sick and deaf. Meanwhile, the British ‘Watchkeeper’ drone program had so many add-ons it couldn’t lift off.

Overcomplication isn’t an exclusively British problem: industry sources told The Arsenal that some NATO joint procurements are so complicated that nobody bids for them.

But there are different approaches to defense procurement in Europe. Chalmers said France gets more value by prioritizing. For instance, whereas France makes do with one aircraft carrier, the UK has “cannibalized the Navy and the Air Force to pay for a second aircraft carrier.”

The British approach means one ship can remain at sea while the other is being repaired. By contrast, the French accept that “they have to manage without it—and they do that,” Chalmers said.

The other problem is overcomplicated bespoke projects. In his report, he calls for simplifying procurement and “flipping the switch to proven, off-the-shelf kit.” 

Two problems underlie this: One is a tendency for British procurement managers to make the best the enemy of the good. 

The second, he said, is an ironic consequence of resource scarcity: elaborate projects are less likely to get cut than mundane ones. 

The European Commission on Wednesday outlined plans to reduce the EU’s dependence on China for raw materials critical to defense, including new export control measures.

As part of the ‘RESourceEU Action Plan,’ the Commission said it will propose legislation next year to curb exports of scrap permanent magnets used to make motors, including for military drones. 

Last Tuesday’s edition of The Arsenal highlighted the importance of neodymium iron boron permanent magnets.

The Commission also plans to amend last year’s Critical Raw Materials Act, which sets targets for domestic production, processing and recycling of permanent magnets in the following ways:

The Commission estimates that 20% of the EU’s current demand for permanent magnets could be recoverable through domestic recycling, an official told reporters. 

The Critical Raw Materials Act, passed last year, sets the following targets:

What is a Sea Baby—and did the Romanian Naval Forces blow one up last week? 

A Sea Baby is a maritime drone built for the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). 

It’s essentially a remote-controlled and semi-autonomous platform that can be fitted with reconnaissance equipment, explosives for kamikaze attacks on ships, machine guns and projectiles—including missiles—to shoot down helicopters. Sea Babies have recently made the news for targeting Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tankers in the Black Sea.

The second question is harder to answer. 

On Wednesday, the defense ministry of Romania, which borders Ukraine, announced that navy divers had conducted a controlled explosion of a maritime drone in the Black Sea, 36 nautical miles from the Romanian port city of Constanța. The divers had identified the drone as a Sea Baby, the ministry said, and were responding to a request from the coast guard to “neutralize an object that was endangering navigation."

That evening, the SBU told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne that “all SBU ‘Sea Baby’ maritime unmanned vehicles involved in performing combat missions in the Black Sea continue to operate…. None of them have been lost.”

The SBU also told Suspline that no Sea Babies entered Romania’s waters. 

On Thursday, the Romanian defense ministry published video footage on X of what it said was the destruction of the drone. However, the drone is not clearly visible in the clip, which shows a small speck on the horizon, followed by an explosion.

Spain’s army has published a €4.6 million tender for remote weapons stations to be mounted on its VAMTAC four-wheel-drive vehicles, which are similar to American Humvees. 

Few details of the requirements are publicly available: Documents published on Spain’s public procurement website provide instructions for contractors with the appropriate security clearance to submit a request for details.

The deadline is 7 January. Tenders must be submitted in Spanish.

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