Russia conducted a UAV campaign over Europe between August 2024 and February 2026, likely enabled by shadow-fleet vessels, exposing critical gaps in allied air defences, legal authority, and political cohesion. The campaign operated with substantial impunity across the airspace of a dozen NATO member states and Ireland, disrupting commercial aviation and penetrating sensitive defence installations, including nuclear-sharing sites and France’s ballistic-missile submarine base at Île Longue.
The Kremlin’s success stemmed from exploiting Europe’s air-defence architecture, designed for conventional threats, not low-cost, deniable UAV incursions below the collective response threshold. The campaign aimed to probe response times, map critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, impose economic and psychological costs, and normalise low-level airspace violations. Attribution remains a key challenge for European governments, none having publicly attributed sightings to Russia. Europe’s current counter-UAV architecture is uneven, legal authorities fragmented, and response options disproportionate. The European Drone Defence Initiative (EDDI) aims for a continent-wide architecture by late 2026, but lacks agility and a mandate over launch vessels.
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