Drones about NATO area: Why are they not simply shot down?

Air traffic in Denmark has disturbed several times in the past few days and caused uncertainty and chaos.

Both in the Aalborg case and in the case of the other western Danish airports, the responsible police stations had stated at night that the drones could possibly be fetched from the sky if this was justifiable. In the end, however, no one was shot down. The head of operations in Aalborg, Jesper Bøjgaard Madsen, said that it was not possible to get the drones from the sky. It is unclear what measures were in the room to take action against the drones.

In the past, drones that are used in so -called hybrid attacks have proven to be partly insensitive to electronic interference measures.

When shooting down, the security authorities and the military are faced with a difficult consideration: What danger is greater, that of the use of weapons against the drone or the threat from the drone itself? After all, the missile could crash over populated areas and cause damage.

The dangers recently became clear in Poland, where NATO rose fighter planes in response to a swarm of Russian military drones, fired the steering aircraft and shot some drones. According to the government, a house was most likely hit by the rocket of a western fighter jet.

In addition, it is a cost-benefit assessment: Should fighter jets even fire expensive steering aircraft on compared to cheap drones? There had been public doubts and criticism of the elaborate and expensive procedure in Poland.

The problem: The topic of drone defense has been overslept or misjudged for a long time, so that the necessary weapon technology that has already been developed has so far hardly been available in the area.

In the Bundeswehr, the Inspector General Carsten Breuer quickly wants to use new weapons systems to defend drones. “One thing is clear to me: In the end, it will probably have to result in the fact that we use drones against drones,” said Germany’s highest ranked soldier from the German Press Agency in Berlin.

After the drone alarm, Poland is based on the knowledge of the Ukraine attacked by Russia – last week the Defense Minister agreed that the Polish army should be trained by the neighboring country in combating flight objects. The Ukrainian army fends off Russian drones mainly with machine gun fire. Mobile troops with off-road vehicles, helicopters and also the cheek and skynex systems delivered by Germany are also used.