Diverted drones trigger €12 billion Baltic defense push

An armed drone carrying explosives detonated on Latvian soil last week. No air-defence system intercepted it. Two days later, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen flew to Vilnius, pledged €12 billion in defence loans, and called the incursions "a deliberate Russian strategy to destabilise democratic societies." Lithuania's State Defence Council meets tomorrow to review air-defence readiness. NATO's Baltic air mission, guarding the region since 2004, was built to intercept Russian fighter jets. It has no established procedure for Ukrainian drones redirected by Russian jamming.

A policing mission meets a drone war

Since early May, Ukrainian combat drones have crossed into Baltic airspace repeatedly. Lithuania's defence ministry confirmed both drones found on its soil this year were Ukrainian, diverted by Russian electronic warfare. The diversion mechanism is already documented. Russia has scaled its GPS-spoofing antenna network in Kaliningrad from three to 36 units in a single year, enough to blind a drone's navigation and push it westward.

On May 19, a Romanian F-16 flying under NATO's Baltic Air Policing (the rotating fighter presence that has guarded Baltic skies since 2004) shot down a drone over Estonia — the first such engagement over allied territory. An Estonian commander noted it succeeded partly due to "favourable weather." Peacetime rules require visual identification before firing, and clear skies made that possible. In cloud cover or at night, the same drone would likely pass unengaged.

Baltic Air Policing remains strictly a surveillance-and-escort mission. Engagement requires a decision chain running through NATO's air operations centre in Germany. Lithuania's military chief, General Vaikšnoras, acknowledged the problem publicly. "Processes are not fast enough," he told reporters (LRT, Lrytas).

The three Baltic presidents want more than incremental fixes. On May 21, they demanded NATO upgrade from Air Policing to a full Air Defence mission, with authority for local commanders to engage threats, permanent fighter basing, and integrated counter-drone systems. That shift requires consensus from all 32 NATO members through the North Atlantic Council (where every ally holds a veto). Secretary General Rutte called the current system "effective." When Estonia's foreign minister argued Russia is deliberately steering drones into allied airspace, Rutte responded: "I have no information on that."

Brussels funds hardware. NATO runs intercepts. Nobody connects the systems.

Von der Leyen's Vilnius package included real money: SAFE defence loans (the EU's new instrument for member-state arms purchases) for all three Baltic states, plus €1.5 billion in redirected EU cohesion funds. Her call for a "unified drone alert system" came with a caveat, though. The Commission "could initiate" an assessment. No legislative proposal followed. Under EU treaties, air defence belongs to member states and NATO. The Commission can fund procurement but cannot command an intercept.

Defence Commissioner Kubilius has launched an EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance and a separate drone defence initiative targeting capability by end-2027. Both are industrial coordination tools designed to speed up production. Neither carries operational authority over who fires at what.

Six separate counter-drone architectures are being built simultaneously across NATO's eastern flank: three Baltic national systems, Poland's 18-battery SAN programme, Finland's layered border sensors, and a Nordic four-country procurement alliance formalised under NORDEFCO (the Nordic defence cooperation framework) this month. Each country procures its own radars and interceptors. EU SAFE loans fund these national purchases without interoperability conditions.

The attribution question at the centre of every incident remains unresolved. Ukrainian drones, diverted by Russian jamming, are landing as armed munitions on NATO soil. Whether Moscow intends that outcome or merely creates the conditions while protecting its own airspace will shape the debate at NATO's Ankara summit in July, where 32 allies must decide whether to keep a command architecture that worked once, in good weather, against a slow-moving target.