Mykhailo SamusRussian UAV incursions into the airspace of Poland and Romania, three MiG-31s over Estonia, and “unknown” drones over Sweden, Denmark and Norway are gradually shaking Europe out of its fear-induced stupor before Moscow’s decayed quasi-empire. At the same time, European politicians are waking up to an uncomfortable truth: the actual state of EU/NATO defence has proved unprepared for the challenges and threats Ukraine has been flagging for eleven years. Bureaucratised, protectionist, and geared towards spending hundreds of billions without the necessary coordination and joint force-building, Europe’s defence posture is predictably faltering in the face of Moscow’s brazen aggression.
There are, however, first signs of constructive movement. The European Commission has announced a “Drone Wall” along the eastern frontier as a single European capability – developed, deployed and sustained jointly, with real-time response. The package envisages creating a “Drone Alliance” with Ukraine and €6 billion in funding to turn Ukrainian ingenuity into an edge for Europe’s counter-UAS architecture and to launch a joint EU-Ukraine drone industrialisation drive.
The logic is shifting away from peacetime notions of “efficient defence” towards a mass-interception economy, where the cost of neutralising a target approaches the cost of the target itself. Influential European outlets now state plainly: after the “incident” in Poland, the EU is accelerating investment in the Drone Wall, drawing on Ukraine’s solutions. In parallel, NATO is deploying the “Eastern Sentry” mission – yet this looks more like a temporary and poorly balanced fix, unlikely even in theory to shield European states against swarms of Russian drones.
A positive development is the tightening of political parameters for building the Drone Wall with Ukraine. The European Commissioner for Defence, Andrius Kubilius, is preparing consultations with defence ministers from the EU’s eastern flank on the project’s architecture – from radar networks and other sensors to electronic warfare (EW) means and a layered interceptor system – bringing in Ukraine as a source of wartime-proven technologies and tactics. This is not merely a reply to Russia’s drone attack on Poland. The Baltic states and Finland are strengthening their legal regimes for using armed force against UAVs; Lithuania has already granted its military an unconditional right to shoot down intruding drones. European officials, meanwhile, warn that the system will only work if requirements are unified, technologies interoperable and command-and-control fully integrated. Otherwise each state will build its own line of defence, incompatible with its neighbour’s.
Crucially, Europe’s existing air defence does not meet contemporary needs. The old model’s weak point is the mismatch of “exquisite and expensive” versus “cheap and mass”. Using advanced fighters and costly missiles against swarms of low-end Russian-Iranian Shaheds places Europe at an immediate disadvantage. This is precisely the gap the EU aims to close through joint procurement of systems proven in Ukraine, rapid build-up of air and maritime presence, and a dense radar belt along the eastern border, where the Russian threat is daily.
Ukraine is fighting and offering cooperative models
The West has learnt that Ukraine’s method does not rely on “miracle weapons” but on a disciplined, creative conveyor: from front-line requirement to high-tech design and serial production in a matter of weeks. A telling example is the newly announced partnership between Vyriy and The Fourth Law to mass-produce FPV drones based on the Vyriy-10 with the TFL-1 terminal guidance module. Field experience indicates a two- to four-fold increase in strike effectiveness for only around a ten per cent rise in unit cost. Software updates take minutes, and the module has already passed NATO codification. These are precisely the kind of cheap, scalable and adaptable building blocks Europe needs for its Drone Wall.
In Ukraine, incentives are directly tied to combat effect. Official “e-points” for confirmed strikes are converted by units into purchases on the Brave1 marketplace. This compresses the “battlefield-to-factory” loop to the minimum and aligns orders to real results rather than presentations. Administration is handled by DOT Chain-Defence, the Ministry of Defence’s digital supply chain, which cuts bureaucratic friction and increases tempo.
The state is simultaneously adding new classes of interceptors. More than twenty-five Ukrainian drone-interceptor models have been approved for use, some hunting Shahed-type targets. The strength of the Ukrainian model lies not in betting on a single “golden” platform, but in variety and speed of force integration.
International production initiatives are reinforcing this. The United Kingdom is launching serial manufacture of Ukrainian drone-interceptors, with the first thousand destined for Ukraine and further scaling for European needs. Interception costs are markedly lower than firing expensive missiles at Shahed-class targets, and the systemic effect is greater. This is how a joint European capability can—and should—work in practice.
Technology adaptation and maximum autonomy
Ukrainian experience has reset assumptions about the battlespace. Tens of thousands of drones and sensors create a 20-kilometre kill zone with high probability of destruction, where a heat signature, radio emission or careless movement triggers the strike cycle almost instantly. Twentieth-century constructs – columns of armour and infantry without EW cover and robotic support – rapidly become targets. Instead, ground robots for logistics, reconnaissance, breaching, fire support and demining are entering daily use.
Autonomy is becoming a key performance parameter not only for drones but across weapon classes. AI-enabled systems recognise targets, select approach paths and prepare firing solutions autonomously, leaving the human to authorise release.
Against this backdrop, NATO and EU measures such as “Eastern Sentry”, built around traditional fighters and SAMs to counter hundreds of Shaheds, look like military anachronism and political short-sightedness – evidence, too, of lost time since 2014, when Russia’s war against Ukraine and Europe truly began.
Victory in today’s war – and in future high-technology conflicts – depends on the speed with which innovation runs the full course: laboratory, production, battlefield, including special operations. Priorities are clear. AI is required to automate reconnaissance, planning and fires within a drone-centric battlespace. Advanced EW and cognitive radio networks must generate a secure digital environment and deny the adversary the use of his own. Cheap, long-range and precise unmanned systems – air, ground and maritime – are needed to exhaust air defences and enable combined massed strikes. Decisive, too, is mass production of low-cost strike, reconnaissance and counter-UAS drones and other robotic systems, reducing human losses by substituting machines at the front. Dual-use technologies – from satellite services and 3D printing to commercial EW kits and cloud services – should be exploited to the maximum.
Importantly, AI in this architecture is not an add-on but a new decision-logic. It compresses the kill chain – detect, decide, destroy. Doctrine shifts accordingly from a classic network-centric model with a single centre to a federated network of AI-enabled autonomous decision nodes. Distributed elements – units, drones, assault teams – act independently within a commander’s intent, remaining resilient under fire and EW pressure while mitigating single-point-of-failure risks.
The core conclusion for Europe follows. If Europeans genuinely want continental security, they must abandon the inertia of peacetime “hyper-exquisite” defence business and the arm’s-length posture of “how can we help?”. What is required is not help but a joint defence system with Ukraine – grounded in pooled effort, technology, experience and investment.
The Drone Wall will be effective only if built to Ukrainian rules: technology follows the soldier’s and commander’s needs; the priorities are rapid detection, precise geolocation and immediate strike; autonomy and seriality trump bespoke “masterpieces”. Europe’s defence industrialisation will work best with Ukraine, already a source of unique expertise. This is why Brussels’ €6 billion Drone Alliance decision, accelerated joint procurement of proven systems, and NATO’s Eastern Sentry should be merely the opening response to Russia’s threat. Next must come systemic, joint EU-Ukraine steps: a roadmap for a new European air defence in which solutions proven in Ukraine – cheap, effective and rooted in advanced technologies – prevail. It is time to build this defensive wall with Ukraine – and to do it effectively.