To defend NATO’s airspace Europe must make Ukraine an integral part of its defenses from the outset.
Lesia Orobets , together with Elena Davlikanova, in an article for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), discuss the prospects for defending European airspace. Today, Ukraine is a global leader in countering large-scale attacks by Russian drones. Over the years of full-scale war, the country has created the most battle-tested integrated air defence system in the world – a unique experience that no NATO country has.
When Poland began shooting down Russian drones, the EU and NATO began discussing the idea of creating a so-called “drone wall.” However, the Alliance is taking only cautious and fragmentary steps to counter a threat that it does not yet fully understand and with which it has insufficient practical experience.
The creation of a “drone wall” involves deploying thousands of sensors across Europe, including passive radars for detecting low-observable UAVs, radio-frequency detection systems, acoustic complexes for drone identification, optical towers transmitting real-time data, and next-generation 3D radars resistant to Russian jamming technologies.
Since 2022, Ukraine has become one of the world’s leading producers of unmanned aerial vehicles, manufacturing up to four million drones per year.
The scale of Ukrainian experience is difficult to overstate. Russia has launched nearly 50,000 drones in the country since 2022. Only about a quarter reached their target, demonstrating that Ukraine possesses the world’s most combat-tested integrated air-defense system, forged under conditions no NATO state has experienced.
To make the European drone defence system truly effective, Ukraine needs to be structurally integrated into the common security architecture – not as an observer, but as a key participant.
Read more in the CEPA article.