NATO's Defense Blind Spot

The use of drones in warfare is not a new tactic, so why, experts ask, is the alliance struggling to deter perpetrators from attempting to violate its airspace?

- by TOM O'CONNOR

TACTICAL CHALLENGE Burning houses in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. Azerbaijan's drones overwhelmed Armenian forces and their allies during the conflict there.

AS A RECENT WAVE OF DRONE INCURSIONS marks some of the most serious violations of NATO airspace in the history of the alliance, experts are warning that member states might find themselves unprepared to handle a sustained campaign by a foe like Russia

Already, some argue, the world's most powerful military bloc appears to be scrambling to adapt to the new reality of an emerging form of modern warfare in which Moscow has heavily invested.

“NATO and individual NATO countries have been caught with their pants down and are rapidly trying to pull them back up,” Keir Giles, a leading expert on Russian military issues who serves as a senior consulting fellow at the Chatham House think tank, told Newsweek.

“Every time something like this happens, we hope that it will be the spur to impress upon individual NATO countries and NATO itself the urgency of putting in place measures to prevent incidents like this from happening again,” he added. “But NATO moves still at the speed of NATO and individual countries do not share a common appreciation of how urgent the threat is.”

The Question 'Everybody Is Asking'

While the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has further highlighted the relevance of cost-effective unmanned aerial vehicles on the battlefield, the use of such drones on the front lines and beyond is nothing new. These platforms have long evolved from the initial larger systems debuted by the United States during the “War on Terror” at the dawn of the 21st century and still in use today into smaller, cheaper and more maneuverable assets.