Von der Leyen: “The pan-European drone wall will also protect the southern side of Europe”

The President of the European Commission has spoken successful melodramatic tones regarding caller incidents of drone flights implicit European airports that person led authorities to edifice to a impermanent lockdown.

Ursula von der Leyen was astatine the European Parliament’s plenary league successful Strasbourg wherever she presented the Commission’s program to unafraid Europe against what she described arsenic a hybrid warfare successful progress.

“Something caller and unsafe is happening successful our skies; successful conscionable the past 2 weeks, MiG fighters person violated Estonian airspace and drones person flown implicit captious locations successful Belgium, Poland, Romania, Denmark and Germany {…}Make nary mistake, this is portion of a worrying signifier of increasing threats crossed our Union. Undersea cables person been cut. Airports and logistics hubs person been paralysed by cyber-attacks and elections are being targeted by a run of malign influence. This is not random harassment. It is simply a coherent and escalating run to upset our citizens, trial our resolve, disagreement our national and weaken our enactment for Ukraine, and it is clip to telephone a spade a spade. This is simply a hybrid warfare and we indispensable instrumentality it precise seriously,” said President von der Leyen.

According to the Commission President herself, “the founding ngo of the European Union is peacekeeping, and contiguous that means having the capableness to deter aggression and provocation, and Europe urgently needs to equip itself with a strategical effect capacity, a capableness that is acceptable to woody with the changing quality of war. We indispensable make and support it together, and we indispensable beryllium capable to respond successful existent time.The enactment has already begun. We are seeing the largest summation successful defence spending successful the past of the Union. Now we request a precise pan-European plan, coordinated precise intimately with NATO, connected however to determination forward. And we volition soon present, successful fact, successful 2 weeks, we volition contiguous our roadmap of preparedness, 2030, which we telephone peacekeeping.”

As President von der Leyen said, the archetypal constituent deals specifically with violations of EU airspace, calling for a caller pan-European flagship, namely the surveillance of the eastbound broadside of Europe with an anti-drone wall. We request an anti-drone strategy that is affordable and acceptable for purpose, for accelerated detection, accelerated interception and, erstwhile necessary, accelerated neutralisation

“The anti-drone partition volition lend to the eastbound side; it volition show and support the skies, seas and terrain of our eastbound members.

But it’s not conscionable astir our eastbound border. Right now, it’s our priority, but what we request is simply a 360-degree approach. This anti-drone strategy volition beryllium a shield for our full union, including, of course, the southbound side, and it should beryllium designed to code a wide scope of challenges, from responding to earthy disasters to countering planetary organized crime, from tracking equipped migration to controlling the Russian shadiness fleet, and the database is long, autonomous systems are astatine the bosom of 21st period security, and Europe indispensable beryllium astatine the cutting edge.”