The head of a leading counter-drone manufacturer has warned that Europe lacks the defences to protect itself against Russia and will need thousands of systems to build a proposed “drone wall” across the continent.
Sky News visited the factory in the northern Danish city of Aalborg, one of the cities targeted by suspected Russian drones last week, which caused airspace to close for several hours.
“The number of installations that you need to have in order to protect is high and today, what is already installed is very, very low,” explained Dan Hermansen, chief executive of MyDefence.
“It depends on how long you need to make the ‘wall’, but take a typical airport, you’ll need an installation of say 10 [detection systems] to cover it, then you can have jamming equipment on top of that, so you’re into the many thousands [of devices needed].”
Their counter-drone technology is already being used by Ukrainian troops on the frontline to defend against Russian drones.
The equipment can track incoming drones, hijack the signal, and forcibly divert them back to their origin. They can also detect the make and model of the drone and triangulate the location of the controller.
In recent days, foreign governments have enquired about buying the sensors.
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“Airports around the world have gone to sleep with regards to this threat. Nobody has really cared about it for years, so it has not been a high-value thing to invest in, and suddenly you have airports that are super vulnerable to this threat, and now everybody is scrambling to get stuff to happen,” Mr Hermansen told us.
“Everybody needs to wake up and say okay, this has to be a sustainable way of protecting critical infrastructure going forward.”
The warning comes as European leaders gather in the Danish capital Copenhagen to discuss a response to numerous recent Russian incursions into European airspace.
“When I look at Europe today, I think we are in the most difficult and dangerous situation since the end of the Second World War, not the Cold War anymore,” Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters on the eve of the meeting.
“I hope that everybody recognizes now that there is a hybrid war, and one day it’s Poland, the other day it’s Denmark, and next week it will probably be somewhere else that we see sabotage or we see drones flying.
“There are many different kinds of episodes. So I see this from a European perspective. There is only one country that is willing to threaten us, and it is Russia, and therefore we need a very strong answer back.”
Although Danish security officials haven’t publicly blamed Russia, some European countries have already pointed the finger at Moscow, as the incidents happened shortly after Russian drones were flown into Polish and Romanian airspace.
There were further sightings of drones flying near and over military bases in northern Germany last week too, and Sky News has learned that more potential incursions have been detected and averted since new counter-drone equipment was installed in Copenhagen in recent days.
Police and intelligence agencies are now working on a theory that the drones could have been launched and controlled from a Russian ship disguised as a cargo vessel in the waters close by.
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On Wednesday afternoon, French forces intercepted and boarded a tanker called the Boracay off the northwestern coast of France.
It’s suspected of changing names and refusing to cooperate with officials. It was monitored sailing around Denmark under a different name, Pushpa, around the time of the drone incursions last week.
Security is tight in Copenhagen as the meeting gets under way – drones are banned from flying nationwide, Danish warships are patrolling off the coast, and counter-drone technology can be seen at the country’s main international airport.
A number of NATO militaries have flown in equipment to help protect the gathering.
There is a sense that NATO countries are playing catch-up somewhat – responding to new Russian threats, as and when they happen.
Right now, its drone incursions. But Moscow will almost certainly adapt, change tactics, and find a new way to test Europe’s defences.
