Britain should work with Nato allies in developing an integrated air and missile defence system after the incursion of nearly 20 Russian drones into Poland, according to two authors of the UK strategic defence review.
Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser, said that Russia was “testing the limits” of Europe’s defences at a time when the military commitment of the US to Nato was uncertain.
“The message from this is that there needs to create an integrated air and ballistic missile defence system – and that Europeans are going to have to realise they will have to do this themselves,” said Hill, who was part of the three-strong team.
The independent defence expert said that while the US said it stood by its allies, such words meant nothing because they would be unlikely to be accompanied by extra American military deployments to defend Nato’s eastern flank.
Donald Trump had “no desire to go to war, except at home”, Hill said, citing the US president’s repeated comments that he would like to deploy the military in Chicago in an extreme effort to crack down on crime.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Monday that three or four out of 19 Russian drones were shot down, raising concerns that the interception rate was relatively low and that Moscow could cause more serious damage in future. Some of the drones flew more than a hundred miles into Polish airspace.
Gen Alexus Gregory Grynkewich, Nato’s supreme allied commander for Europe, said that he had “low confidence” in the drone numbers previously reported, suggesting the defenders were not immediately clear what they were dealing with.
But, speaking at press conference in Lithuania, the military commander said: “Based on the lessons from these events, we’re going to continue to work to improve our ability to defend every single inch of alliance airspace.”
British officials indicated that an agreement signed with Ukraine – called Project Octopus – to jointly develop large numbers of drones to intercept Russian Shaheds could also be deployed in Poland as well as in Ukraine.
Defence secretary John Healey spoke about Russia at the DSEI arms fair. Photograph: Ben Whitley/PA
John Healey, the defence secretary, told the DSEI arms fair in London that the UK had to be “more ready to fight” in a war in order to deter growing Russian aggression – and that weapons like the Project Octopus drones would serve both British and Ukrainian interests in the future.
“What we get is the learning from the Ukrainians,” Healey said. “What we get is the shared IP [intellectual property]. What we get are the products of what we produce with the Ukrainians available for ourselves and our own armed forces, not just to supply the Ukrainians and their defence.”
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On Monday, Healey said that he had asked the British military to consider how the UK could bolster Poland’s air defences. Another option under consideration is to contribute RAF Typhoon jets to an enlarged air policing mission in eastern Europe – six of the fighters were on Nato duty as part of a rotating mission earlier this summer.
The former army general Sir Richard Barrons, a second member of the defence review team, said that the number of drones involved indicated “it was clearly a deliberate incursion” by Russia, although the fact that they appeared to be Gerbera decoy drones rather than armed Shaheds meant it was “a minor act of provocation”.
The drone incursion demonstrated, Barrons said, that existing Nato defences were “well short of dealing with what is a small tactical problem”. He added that using fighter jets to shoot down drones was “massive overkill” but that it was necessary to “step up quite quickly to improve medium- to low-level air defence”.
He also argued that preventing missile and drone attacks over western airspace “amounted to defending on the goal line” and that effective deterrence would require shooting down Russian jets launching attacks into western airspace. Such an approach, however, is unlikely to find favour with politicians who emphasise that Nato is a defensive alliance.