Europe has unveiled its plan to create a "shield for our entire Union" by establishing a so-called "drone wall".
Up in the skies, spanning thousands of kilometres, radars, sensors, signal jammers, and interceptors will be at the ready.
Ready to defend against unmanned aircraft from Russia.
In recent months, suspected Russian incursions into European airspace have been increasing in frequency, forcing NATO to beef up its defences.
The drone wall, now officially referred to as the European Drone Defense Initiative, is among the flagship initiatives outlined in the EU's Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030.
The road map sets ambitious targets to prepare the bloc to "respond to any crisis, including high-intensity conflict".
"Danger will not disappear even when the war in Ukraine ends," European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters.
"It is clear we need to toughen our defences against Russia."
The drone wall was initially planned to prioritise protection along Europe's eastern flank, where countries border Russia and its ally Belarus.
But now the plan aims to cover the entire continent with a fully functioning anti-drone system by the end of 2027.
What exactly is a drone wall?
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated the idea for the drone wall after NATO shot down Russian drones that invaded Poland's airspace last month.
Expensive F-35 and F-16 fighter jets, helicopters and a Patriot air defence system were deployed to take out the cheap Shahed drones.
Drone incidents over airports in Denmark and Germany in the following weeks reinforced European leaders' view that the continent urgently needed better, more sustainable protection against such threats.
In the 27 days between September 9 and October 6 this year, at least 39 drone-related incidents were reported in countries as far as Norway in the north-west and Belgium and the Netherlands in the west, according to research compiled by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and verified by the ABC.
"Something new and dangerous is happening in our skies … This is not random harassment," Ms von der Leyen said in a speech to member states earlier this month.
"The drone wall is our response to the realities of modern warfare."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied that Moscow has any aggressive plans towards the EU.
[Europe MAP 1]The drone wall will not be a wall of drones.
It will be a layered network of detection and interception systems, building on individual EU members' anti-drone capabilities.
"The European Drone Defence Initiative will be designed with a 360-degree approach, as a multi-layered, technologically advanced system with interoperable counter-drone capabilities for detection, tracking, and neutralisation," the EU defence road map said.
Daniel Hegedus, regional director for Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, envisioned it would be more like a "web" of defence systems to counter different sized drones.
"A drone wall cannot be a wall, it must be a web of short-range, point-defence systems deployed around potential targets," he told the ABC.
"How dense such a 'web' should be is determined by financial, military, and social considerations".
Reuters interviewed more than a dozen EU officials and industry executives to better understand the types of technologies that could be used.
Drawing on lessons from Ukraine, they said sensors for the project would likely include cameras, acoustic systems that can detect drone engine noise, specialist radars and radio-frequency detectors.
Weapons to counter any attack would include a mix of machine guns and cannons, rockets, missiles and interceptor drones – which can slam into enemy drones or explode close to them – as well as electronic jamming systems and lasers.
The use of AI to help identify and target incoming drones was also expected to grow.
"There is no one-size-fits-all solution," Dominic Surano, director of special projects at Nordic Air Defence, told Reuters.
"There is no single technology silver bullet."
Is a 'drone wall' even possible?
The initial focus of the drone proposal was on bolstering the EU's eastern border states, but it has since been broadened out after mysterious drones rattled a string of countries further west.
Ms Kallas said drones were a concern for all EU countries states, not just the ones along the eastern flank.
"Every country is at risk. Every Member State should be investing in counter-drone systems and capabilities to hit ground targets," she said.
Nine countries fall under NATO's eastern European flank: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Finland.
[map: Eastern flank]The European Drone Defence Initiative and Eastern Flank Watch, which aims to "fortify the EU's Eastern borders across land, air and sea", are the two flagships projects the Commission said were particularly urgent.
"We propose a new anti-drone system to be fully operational by the end of 2027," Ms Kallas said.
Mr Hegedus was sceptical about the possibility of providing high-level drone protection across the entire continent.
"The term 'drone wall' raises many expectations that simply cannot be fulfilled," he said.
"It is simply not possible, for cost reasons, to create a credible defence against drones across the whole territory of a country."
He said Russia's Geran Shahed-type attack drones cost about $US50,000 ($77,000) and can reach the entire territory of the Baltic States and Poland, with thousands of potential targets.
"Providing high-level drone protection to a single potential target can cost several times more than that," he said.
No estimates were given to the overall cost of the drone defence system.
European Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said "we're not talking here about hundreds of billions".
The defence road map still needs to be approved by member states at a leaders' summit next week.
Some countries have endorsed plans for a drone wall, but Germany and France were yet to give their full support.
At an EU summit in Copenhagen earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron said the threat of drones was "more sophisticated, more complex" than the idea of a drone wall suggested.
Germany's defence minister also flagged that the concept could take three to four years, or "even more" to get off the ground.
ABC/Reuters
