Poland Prepares for Drone War With Russia
- Res Publica
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Europe needs to get on the front foot to tackle Russia’s hybrid warfare, a Polish deputy defense minister warned as he unveiled details of a new anti-drone systems.
Cezary Tomczyk, secretary of state in Poland’s Ministry of Defense, has provided new details about a new €2bn (£2.3bn) anti-drone system which will be the largest of its kind on the continent, and able to detect and neutralize enemy drones.
The system, named San after a river in southeastern Poland, will be deployed along Poland’s northern and eastern borders, Tomczyk said in an interview with this author. He added that it should be operational as soon as this summer, far sooner than the EU’s drone wall.
San will be integrated as the lowest level in a network of air defense systems Poland has been building, which already includes the Wisła long-range, Narew short-range, and Pilica Plus very short-range systems.
“This is a system that is built for wartime defense purposes,” Tomczyk told this author. “But, at least in some parts, it can be used in peacetime.”
This direct through-line, connecting preparations for a full-scale conventional war with responses to Russia’s accelerating shadow war, is what separates Poland from the rest of the Western alliance and has placed it at the forefront of military innovation in NATO.
The European Union’s defense readiness roadmap, published in October, outlined a host of measures to transform Europe’s ability to defend itself against Russia by 2030 — along with a drone initiative that would become operational by the end of next year.
Since that announcement, Moscow has demonstrated the inadequacy of the plans by sabotaging a Polish railway connecting Warsaw to Ukraine, among other actions. The message was clear: the Kremlin would continue its hybrid operations, and is already threatening the critical infrastructure of NATO member states in ways that undermine their national security.
As ambitious as the European plans are, they are too long-term to deal with the new, even more aggressive phase of Russian hybrid warfare underway in NATO’s East.
While it is focusing on preparations for a full-scale, continental war, the alliance faces an immediate threat of a prolonged, destabilizing period of Russian operations to target the alliance’s soft underbelly without doing enough to trigger NATO’s collective defense.
As NATO’s third-largest military and the largest economy in the alliance’s east, Poland has found itself in the center of the maelstrom, weathering not just Russian drone incursions and railway bombings but sustained sabotage, arson, and cyberattacks.
While the country has been gearing up for a generational fight with Moscow like the rest of NATO, it has also been treating Moscow’s shadow war campaign as a danger that is inseparable from the wider Russian threat to Europe.
In the process, it has been evolving its domestic defense policy against Russian hybrid warfare — and shaping the response of the entire alliance. It includes Warsaw’s $2.5bn project to build 700km (435 miles) of physical fortifications and high-tech defense networks along its eastern border, christened East Shield.
Now, Poland has started to use its varied defense arsenal against the more immediate threats it faces from Moscow. Since Russia’s military drone incursion into its airspace in September, Warsaw has introduced a swath of new measures to counter the new phase in the Russia-NATO shadow war.
The first step was the US-made Merops anti-drone system, a mobile, highly portable anti-drone drone which can be launched from the back of a pickup truck. Next came Operation Horizon, which paved the way for the deployment of 10,000 soldiers to guard vital infrastructure, and the development of a mobile app for citizens to report potential acts of sabotage or hybrid warfare.
Then came San, the jewel in the crown of Poland’s response.
At a time of doubts about the US commitment to transatlantic security, Poland will be NATO’s guiding star in the near-term on hybrid defense.
Yet its role in shaping NATO’s direction may go even further, according to Tomczyk. Alongside Poland’s military plans, he wants a response to Russia’s shadow war campaign that focuses more on active deterrence and less on passive defense.
“NATO, the EU, and their members should respond symmetrically and adequately to what Russia is doing,” he said. “And that is exactly what we will do.”
NATO officials have already hinted at the possibility of pre-emptive cyber and other strikes against Russia over Putin’s actions in Europe, and, while Polish military leaders have yet to move in this direction, Warsaw is ideally placed to pioneer such a shift.
Having long relied on the US and its security umbrella to protect it from oppressors, Poland won’t wait for its Western European allies to adapt their military policies and strategic approaches to Russia’s increasing threat to NATO’s east, especially now that Washington is looking less dependable and, in some cases, like Greenland, a possible adversary.
Although Warsaw still has a way to go before achieving regional power status in Europe, by sheer necessity, it will continue to adapt its response to Russia on its own terms — pulling the rest of NATO with it.
By Michal Kranz. Michal Kranz is a Polish-American journalist and analyst based in Warsaw, Poland. He covers geopolitics, conflict, security, historical memory, identity, and migration in Eastern Europe, having reported from the ground during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Polish-Belarusian border crisis, and anti-government protests in Georgia. In addition to CEPA’s Europe’s Edge, his work has been published by Foreign Policy, UnHerd, the Warsaw Institute, Al Jazeera English, Euronews, New Lines Magazine, and more. He also runs The Eastern Flank, a newsletter focusing on Eastern European geopolitics. Article first time published on CEPA web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
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