By Andrew Stuttaford
Sunday, October 05, 2025
The “gray zone” grows ever more treacherous.
As a reminder, “gray zone” describes an action or series
of actions that are not quite war, and not quite not war either.
Writing about this phenomenon in July last year, I borrowed a definition from 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.
I added this:
Two key reasons why waging a war in
the gray zone is so effective for the aggressor are contained in the last part
of that last sentence. The first is the question of proof, and the second,
which applies even if there is proof of who was responsible, is how to respond.
NATO is not (nor should it) go to war over an arson attack or even an
assassination of, say, a business executive [a plot had been in the news]. But
how does it hit back?
And so to drones. The current wave in Europe has now come
with an extra twist.
Drones have been spotted at airports and military
installations across Germany over the past two days, Bild newspaper quoted a
confidential police report as saying, suggesting sightings this week at Munich
Airport were the tip of the iceberg.
Dozens of flights were diverted or
cancelled at Munich Airport on Friday after both runways were closed following
the second drone sighting in two days. Operations resumed, with delays, on
Saturday morning.
Some of those sightings will, as in the case of
(traditional) UFO flaps, be cases of social contagion or, to put it more
kindly, confirmation bias. Every light in the sky becomes a flying saucer or,
in this case, a drone. Equally, some of the drones could be harmless, the work
of hobbyists at play. Nevertheless, much of the current wave, most notably the
recent incursions into Poland, seems obviously Russian-sourced, and there are
some receipts (in the form of wreckage) to back that up.
Drones can fly a very long way, but it seems unlikely (or
at least it ought to be unlikely) that drones would fly from Western Russia or
Belarus to Munich (a distance of over 1,000 miles) without being detected. If
that assumption is correct, it would suggest that the drones were sent from
Germany.
And if that were the case, it raises some nasty
possibilities. If Russia is responsible, the implicit threat contained in drone
flights launched from within Germany is too obvious to need spelling out. And
if Russia or its pals are not responsible, that is hardly reassuring.
The Europeans are discussing a “drone wall” along the EU’s eastern border
(which, despite the terminology, is not some kind of Maginot construction),
but, although this has been agreed in principle there is a debate as to who
should pay for it. Some countries, such as Italy and Greece, feel that this is more of an
issue for states much closer to Russia than they are, a short-sighted view to
take, and not just because drones can fly a long way. If drones start killing
people in, say, Poland or the Baltic or Nordic regions, Italy will not be
immune from the consequences.
But then — see Munich — there is the question of drones
launched against a NATO country from within its own borders and/or the sea.
Italy has a lot of coastline. How to defend against that? As is obvious from
the Russo-Ukrainian war, drones have changed the nature of warfare — and not
just warfare. It is also obvious that no-one yet has devised a method to head
off the threat that they pose, especially, ironically, in countries that are
not at war. Any defense system will probably only be a damage limitation
exercise, but it is bound to be an improvement on what there is now.
The [EU] lacks detection tech to
easily pick up UAVs, and when NATO jets downed three Russian drones over Poland last month, they
used multi-million-dollar missiles to knock down Russian Gerberas costing about
$10,000 each.
Ukraine has been rapidly developing drone and anti-drone
capabilities, and the West is beginning to partner with it in this area. It is also clear that the private
sector is looking at the broader opportunity drones could represent. For
example, a Swedish tech start-up, Nordic Air
Defence, has developed the Kreuger 100, “a lightweight, battery-powered
drone interceptor.” I have no idea how well it will work (and, given Sweden’s
financial history, Kreuger was an interesting name to pick), but that NAD has
attracted early round financing (and some buzz) is somewhat
encouraging. And so was an article in the Daily Telegraph in which it was
explained that the Kreuger 100 is a low-cost mini-missile “which uses infrared
sensors to hunt down hostile drones and ram them out of the sky at high speed.
[This makes] it much safer to use in civilian areas than explosive
projectiles.” That matters when the drones are over facilities such as airports
or, say, targeting residential areas.
The U.S. has no reason to be complacent. Alaska apart, we
may be a long way from Russia, but this is a very large country, with a very
long coastline. Last year’s great New Jersey drone wave may really have been an
UFO-style “flap,” a fuss about nothing, but whatever the truth of it, it did
not leave the impression that we are on top of our drone defense game. I hope I
am wrong.
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