San Francisco Frontiers - EU urged to move fast, learn from Ukraine on 'drone wall'

Defence ministers from around 10 EU countries agreed during the talks, convened by commissioner Andrius Kubilius, to make the so-called "drone wall" a priority for the bloc.

Focus sharpened on the threat this week after unidentified drones forced the closure of airports in Denmark -- which joined the meeting.

"We need to move fast," Kubilius told AFP in an interview. "And we need to move, taking all the lessons from Ukraine and making this drone wall together with Ukraine."

Ukraine -- which has developed a raft of capabilities to detect and shoot down Russian drone swarms more cheaply -- also participated in Friday's talks, and said it wants to be part of the project.

"The drone wall will create a fundamentally new defence ecosystem in Europe, of which Ukraine is ready to be a part," Ukraine's Defence Minister Denys Shmygal wrote on social media.

Kubilius likewise said he wanted to see Ukraine be a "real partner in development of this wall" and that he saw it as another way to integrate Kyiv into Europe's defence build-up.

"Ukraine built an acoustic sensor system when the war started in a very short period of time," defence commissioner Kubilius told AFP. "So I think that we can do that also without long delay."

- 'Detection, tracking, and interception' -

Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister, said there was not yet a firm notion of the costs of creating the project, but estimated it would be in the range of "several billion euros, not hundreds of billions".

"More or less we understand what we need to develop. How much it will cost -- we shall see," he said.

Kubilius earlier told a news conference in Helsinki that meeting participants had "agreed to move from concept to concrete actions".

He said ministers had backed a broad plan to bolster the EU's eastern defences, the "priority" being to build a drone wall "with advanced detection, tracking, and interception capabilities.

"The repeated violations of our airspace are unacceptable," he told reporters.

"The message is clear: Russia is testing the EU and NATO. And our response must be firm, united, and immediate."

- Polish incursion -

EU officials say the initial focus would be to develop a network of sensors to help better detect any incursions.

They say the aim is to have that first stage ready within a year -- but building capabilities to intercept the drones would take longer.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen made a first call for the "drone wall" in a keynote speech earlier this month, hours after NATO shot down Russian drones in Poland.

The NATO response to Russia's drone incursion in Poland showed up the gaps in the alliance's arsenal for tackling that threat.

NATO had to use top-of-the-range fighters firing costly missiles to shoot down a handful of cheap Russian drones.

The alliance has rushed more hardware to its eastern flank in the wake of the incident, but still lacks the sort of low-cost capabilities Ukraine uses.

The "drone wall" proposal is part of Europe's broader push to bolster its defences in the face of the threat from Russia.

EU leaders are set to debate the defence push -- and potential new initiatives -- at a summit in Copenhagen next week.

E.Walker--SFF