Russia conducted a coordinated Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) campaign over a dozen NATO member states and Ireland between August 2024 and February 2026, exposing critical vulnerabilities in European air defences and political cohesion. These deniable incursions penetrated sensitive military installations, including nuclear-sharing sites hosting American B61-12 gravity bombs and France’s Île Longue ballistic-missile submarine base.
The Kremlin launched these low-cost operations from shadow-fleet vessels in international waters to exploit fragmented legal authorities and probe civil-military decision-making thresholds without triggering a collective allied military response. This campaign bypassed traditional air-defence architectures designed for conventional threats, forcing commercial aviation closures and mapping critical infrastructure while revealing Russia's own post-2022 intelligence-collection constraints in Europe. Although the European Drone Defence Initiative (EDDI) aims to establish a continent-wide, 360-degree counter-drone architecture by the end of 2026, its current mandate lacks the agility and doctrinal coherence required to target the launch vessels operating outside European airspace.
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