By Andrew Stuttaford
Sunday, August 10, 2025
The term “hybrid warfare” can incorporate any number of
actions, ranging from subversion to propaganda to intimidation, and in the
current climate can easily tip over into what is known as the “gray zone.”
Last year I quoted a definition of what the latter can mean
by Clementine G. Starling, the deputy director of the Forward
Defense program and a resident fellow at the Transatlantic Security Initiative:
The gray zone describes a set of
activities that occur between peace (or cooperation) and war (or armed
conflict). A multitude of activities fall into this murky in-between—from
nefarious economic activities, influence operations, and cyberattacks to mercenary
operations, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns. Generally, gray-zone
activities are considered gradualist campaigns by state and non-state actors
that combine non-military and quasi-military tools and fall below the threshold
of armed conflict. They aim to thwart, destabilize, weaken, or attack an
adversary, and they are often tailored toward the vulnerabilities of the target
state. While gray-zone activities are nothing new, the onset of new
technologies has provided states with more tools to operate and avoid clear
categorization, attribution, and detection—all of which complicates the United
States’ and its allies’ ability to respond.
And so to the Baltic states, where Russia and its proxy
Belarus now appear to be using drones in an effort both to intimidate Latvia
and Lithuania and test their defenses.
An unidentified drone crossed into Lithuania from Belarus on
July 28, just 18 days after a Russian-made “Gerbera” drone crashed after crossing the
same border. The incursions followed a similar incident in September, when an
unmanned aircraft entered Latvian airspace from Russia.
While Baltic airspace violations
are not new, the context and timing suggest an emerging hybrid campaign to
probe, destabilize, and prepare the battlespace ahead of September’s Russian-Belarus “Zapad” military exercise.
“Zapad” is the Russian for “West,” the subtly named
annual large-scale military exercise it holds with Belarus, in which the
notional adversaries have in the past included villainous Balts.
As CEPA reports, drones:
appear to be deployed by Moscow to
test military readiness, evaluate institutional response, provoke political
reaction, and sow public anxiety in the Baltic states in line with Russia’s
hybrid warfare doctrine…Drone flights can probe sensor coverage, stress-test
the Baltics’ command and control, and exploit the potential for public panic or
political discord.
It’s an indication of how seriously Lithuania takes this
threat that, according to CEPA, “Lithuanian Chief of Defense Raimundas
Vaikšnoras called for preemptive interception of drones before they cross into
Lithuanian airspace,” a highly risky strategy, for obvious reasons, which,
presumably, is why Vilnius is now reviewing plans to toughen its defenses near
the border it shares with Belarus. These include “mobile units to jam GPS and
other navigation signals, rapidly deployable mobile air defense systems to
intercept threats” as well as “legal changes to allow swifter drone
neutralization in emergency situations.”
Interestingly:
In 2024, a wave of unidentified
balloons entered Lithuanian airspace, which, while initially dismissed as
harmless, may also have been part of a hybrid testing campaign — likely aimed at gauging
reaction times and public response.
Of course, there is no way that mysterious balloons or
drones could be used to fulfill a similar function against the U.S…
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