EU defence chief says 'drone wall' could be ready in 1 year

The EU could significantly improve its drone detection capabilities within a year but it will take much longer to develop a full network across land and sea able to track and destroy targets, Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius told Euractiv, Report informs.

The idea of a so-called "drone wall" quickly gained traction after a wave of airspace incursions into EU countries by Russia over recent weeks, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen making it one of her main announcements in her State of the EU speech in September.

"We need to understand [that] we lack capabilities to detect drones," said Kubilius at Euractiv"s launch event for its daily defence newsletter FIREPOWER. "Maybe we have good capability to detect air fighters and missiles, but drones have specificity – they are flying very low, they are small."

The first step is to "quickly" get detection systems, which he said can be done.

Experts say such a system could be ready in "somewhere around a year" to be ready to fend off Russian attacks and "provocations", he said.

Kubilius added that Europe needs to copy Ukraine's military which has deployed acoustic sensors to detect incoming unmanned aerial vehicles that may otherwise not show up on radars.

Lasers are another option for shooting down drones at a minimal cost, he said, with such a defensive network also needing to cover the bloc's extensive maritime boundaries given Monday night"s drone incursions into Norway and Denmark, Kubilius said during the event's Q&A discussion.

Investigations into those latest incursions have not yet revealed a perpetrator, with the Danish police saying only that they must have been carried out by a "capable actor".

Even so, Copenhagen has been added to the Commissioner's call list alongside eastern frontier states to be consulted on the Commission's drone defence plan.

A proper detection system could be done quite quickly: "somewhere around a year". But it will take much longer to develop a system that can track and destroy targets on the ground, he said.

Also speaking at the event, Robert de Groot, vice president at the European Investment Bank in charge of defence and security, said there were discussions over how to funnel financing to the bloc"s eastern states as a priority.

He said it's important to channel cash to build military bases and infrastructure, as well as to increase military mobility for movement of tanks and troops.

"We need to get the stuff from one side of Europe to the other side of Europe, mostly from west to east but also from north to south", De Groot highlighted.