Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are facing a new kind of threat: inexpensive, ambiguous, and hard-to-detect unmanned systems are entering their airspace — and therefore NATO’s.
At the beginning of May, two suspected Ukrainian drones crossed into Latvia after being rerouted by Russian electronic warfare, with one crashing and exploding at an oil storage facility. Last week in Estonia, a NATO-operated Romanian F-16 shot down another re-routed Ukrainian drone. The following day, Lithuania’s capital was brought to alert after a drone alert prompted shelter-in-place orders, disrupted air and train traffic, and prompted another NATO aircraft deployment under the Baltic Air Policing mission. The pattern repeated on a smaller scale the next day.
These incidents differ in detail, but they point to the same problem: NATO does not yet have an effective answer to low-cost drones entering allied airspace. Through the Baltic Air Policing mission, the alliance has the means to engage Russian military aircraft, which continue to test the integrity of Baltic airspace. But drones expose the gap between NATO’s available high-end defenses and the low-cost, ambiguous systems now appearing over the region.
Scrambling fighter jets against cheap drones may demonstrate allied solidarity, but it is neither cost-effective nor technically sound as a default response. It creates a poor exchange ratio: a disposable platform can force NATO to expend flight hours, high-cost weaponry, fuel, maintenance capacity, and command attention. In many cases, the result is limited, because drones may fly too low, too slow, or too deep into national territory for fighter aircraft to engage them effectively.
Russia knows this. A drone does not need to hit a target to be useful. It can probe response times, test command chains, trigger public warnings, disrupt civilian life, and create ambiguity. Its origin may be Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, accidental, jammed, spoofed, or deliberately redirected. That uncertainty is part of the pressure. The aim is to make the Baltic states appear vulnerable, stretch allied procedures, and turn confusion into political effect.
For the Baltic states, the current drone challenge should be treated not only as a vulnerability but as an opportunity to lead NATO in counter-drone defense.
The precedent is clear. Estonia’s experience after Russia’s 2007 cyberattacks — one of the first major state-sponsored cyber campaigns against a foreign country — helped push cyber defense from a niche technical issue into a central security concern. Estonia transformed exposure into expertise and became an influential voice in cyber policy because it had lived the problem before others fully understood it.
Lithuania has a similar record in energy. For years, Russian energy dominance was not just an economic constraint; it was a strategic vulnerability. By breaking dependence on Russian supplies and investing in diversification, Lithuania helped shift the Baltic region’s energy security posture. It showed that a small state could turn coercive pressure into regional leadership.
Drones are the next test. No other part of the alliance is better positioned to lead the counter-drone effort. The Baltic states face the drone problem in its most complex form: in a geographically compressed area bordering Russia and Belarus, alongside support for Ukraine, and in societies already targeted by a long list of hybrid operations. Their drone problem is no longer abstract. That gives them a basis for expertise that few other allies possess.
To flip the current equation, the Baltic nations should lead on detection. Layered regional air defenses, integrated radars, passive sensors, acoustic detection, border surveillance, electronic warfare indicators, and intelligence feeds should be developed and installed. The goal is to reliably detect and swiftly identify approaching unmanned aerial vehicles.
Second, the Baltics should lead the response. Fighter aircraft should remain the high-end backstop, not the first reflex. The region needs to develop cost-effective drone engagement algorithms that are technically sound and operationally realistic — matching the type, trajectory, altitude, and risk profile of each drone to the appropriate response, from monitoring and electronic disruption to interception or kinetic elimination.
Third, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania should lead on civil preparedness. Drone incursions affect civilians even when they cause no physical damage. Air alerts raise immediate questions about shelter availability, crisis communication, and public trust in state institutions. The Baltic states should use these incidents to refine alert systems, map shelter gaps, train local authorities, and develop communication protocols that are fast, credible, and calm.
This should become an integral part of the Baltic agenda inside NATO. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania should host exercises, test systems, drive innovation models, and build a regional counter-drone knowledge base for the alliance. Ukraine should be included wherever possible — its wartime experience with drone detection and defeat is unmatched.
The Baltic states have already shown that they can shape NATO by turning frontline exposure into specialized expertise. Estonia did it on cyber. Lithuania did it on energy. The current drone challenge is the next opportunity to repeat that pattern.
While the Baltic skies are being tested, the task is to make that test useful.
Justina Budginaite-Froehly, PhD, is a transatlantic security and defense expert and a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
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.
