It sometimes seems European NATO only awakens to a threat when it explodes outside the window. Such a moment came in September when Russia sent around 20 attack drones into Polish airspace.
Most crashed as they ran out of fuel, but a number were shot down by Polish and other NATO aircraft, using hugely expensive missiles as they headed for the major alliance air base and Ukraine resupply center at Rzeszów.
Jolted by the impact, NATO and the European Union (EU) responded with pledges of a so-called drone wall. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s European Drone Defence Initiative will be a multi-layered defensive network intended to protect the Union from the type of low-cost, high-volume aerial threats that Russia deploys with increasing frequency.
But as the September incident made clear, NATO is taking baby steps to deal with a threat it doesn’t fully understand and which it has no experience in confronting. There is a shortcut to address this, and it is in front of NATO’s nose; Ukraine is the world leader in defending against nightly and large-scale Russian drone attacks. A drone wall without Ukraine would be a barricade without enough bricks.
The drone wall — which should be more accurately be considered an intricate web for threat detection and destruction — envisions thousands of sensors across Europe: passive radars capable of tracking low radar cross section (RCS) drones; radio frequency detection arrays scanning for command links; acoustic systems able to identify unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) signatures; optical towers feeding live imagery; and next-generation 3D radars resistant to Russian jamming.
These nodes will fuse data through shared EU digital infrastructure, enabling cross-border situational awareness from Finland to Greece. Only then will interception layers — jammers, directed-energy systems, kinetic interceptors, and anti-drone drones — be activated based on threat type and altitude. The project is designed around three pillars: detection, classification, and neutralization. As of now, drone detection at low altitudes is a key challenge.
The initiative’s logic is sound. But the gap between ambition and reality remains vast. And that is where Ukraine becomes indispensable. When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine is ready to join and strengthen the drone wall, he was not offering symbolic support.
In September, the British Defence Secretary John Healey announced that Ukrainian-designed drone-interceptor systems — being manufactured in the UK under the Octopus-100 program — are likely to become a core element of future European drone defenses.
The scale of Ukrainian experience is difficult to overstate. Russia has launched nearly 50,000 drones in the country since 2022. Only about a quarter reached their target, demonstrating that Ukraine possesses the world’s most combat-tested integrated air-defense system, forged under conditions no NATO state has experienced.
Ukraine’s defenders have confronted every variant of Russian aerial tactics: decoy waves, altitude changes, saturation strikes, GPS-denied operations, and mixed drone-missile combinations designed to overload systems.
Ukraine has meanwhile rapidly emerged as one of the world’s leading drone manufacturers, producing up to four million UAVs a year and reshaping expectations of wartime innovation. From disposable first-person view (FPVs) to long-range strike systems, Ukrainian firms now partner with European manufacturers and the US, and attract global investment, turning the pressures of war into a machine for accelerated technological change. That makes Ukraine not just a security partner but the largest friendly drone R&D industry available to democratic nations.
Ukraine’s innovation cycle in drone warfare is unmatched. Technologies evolve every four to six months on the battlefield, with tactics shifting even faster. Ukrainian units have pioneered: drone swarms for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions; ultra-low-altitude penetration to defeat radar; advanced electronic warfare, both offensive and defensive; “air artillery” tactics integrating drones into fire-control networks; and distributed air-defense nodes using cheap interceptors to optimize costs. These real-world lessons cannot be replicated in European test ranges.
Meanwhile, for the European drone defense system to succeed, Europe must structurally embed Ukraine into its architecture — not as an observer but as a core contributor.
First and foremost, this should recognize that Ukraine’s large land mass provides a certain strategic depth for Europe; NATO detection systems would benefit greatly from deployment on Ukraine’s eastern and northern borders.
Several practical steps follow naturally from this.
First, Ukrainian sensor data can be integrated into EU situational awareness systems. No dataset on Russian flight profiles, drone frequencies, or jamming behavior is richer than Ukraine’s. Europe’s detection challenge cannot be solved without it.
Second, Ukraine’s combat-proven counter-unmanned aerial system (UAS) technologies — from jammers to anti-drone drones — should be co-produced inside joint EU-Ukrainian industrial clusters.
Third, Ukraine should join European defense procurement consortia under the drone defense initiative, the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), and the EU’s European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS). Kyiv’s participation would accelerate innovation timelines and reduce costs.
Fourth, EU militaries should integrate Ukrainian officers and engineers into their air-defense centers and training schools. Europe’s lack of doctrine in drone warfare is one of its greatest vulnerabilities and needs Ukraine’s expertise.
Finally, the inclusion of Ukraine will help mitigate a sharp divide over urgency and threat perception. While frontline states view flagship initiatives such as the European drone defense program and Eastern Flank Watch — highlighted in the 2025 State of the Union and elevated in the Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 — as essential responses to Russian aggression and repeated airspace violations, many Western and Southern European nations question the cost, feasibility, and implications for national defense sovereignty.
The informal European Council in Copenhagen in October endorsed the projects in principle, yet deep disagreements over funding, scope, and political ownership reveal a continent still struggling to align threat perceptions and timelines.
The Polish incident revealed Europe’s air-defense vulnerability; Ukraine offers the cure. Drone defenses built alongside but without Ukraine will always lag behind the threat. Working with Ukraine, Europe can stay ahead of Russia’s next steps.
Lesia Orobets is a Ukrainian social activist and former politician, and diplomat. As an MP, from 2008-2010, she co-authored an educational reform bill and anticorruption laws. In 2012-2014, she served as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and as the Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs. Orobets supported the Revolution of Dignity (Maidan 2013-14). The mother of two daughters, her husband serves as a frontline Ukrainian Army officer.
Elena Davlikanova is a Democracy Fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Her work is focused on Ukraine and Russia’s domestic issues and their effects on global peace. She is an experienced researcher who, in 2022, conducted the studies ‘The Work of the Ukrainian Parliament in Wartime’ and ‘The War of Narratives: The Image of Ukraine in Media.’
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End
Russia’s Shadow Warfare
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
