It has been a bad 24 hours for western air defence systems over Poland and Qatar. A flight of Russian one-way suicide drones penetrated deep into Polish territory overnight, causing airfields to be closed, including the Chopin airfield at Warsaw.
A single missile launch from an Israeli F-35 attack aircraft hit the alleged meeting place of the Hamas leadership in the Qatari capital of Doha on Tuesday. Six Hamas members died according to their spokesman – although not Khalil al-Hayaa their lead negotiator, who was the Israelis’ intended target.
The Israeli planes returned intact. That’s despite the fact that Doha is the premier US base in the region and Qatar has acquired at least ten Patriot air defence batteries – and not one appears to have been called into action.
The failure of air defences over Poland and Qatar has important implications for the Nato alliance, and particularly the ‘coalition of the willing’ lead by Nato countries such as Britain, France and Germany trying to bring peace and stability to Europe and ensure a truce for Ukraine.
The incidents in Poland and Qatar raise questions for the UK, about confusion over its own plans and policies as well as the glaring deficiencies in its own air defence provisions. Defence systems over vital areas such as the ports of Eastern England and London are, if anything, far weaker than they were even for the Olympics of 2012.
Yet such holes in our national security system are hardly at the top of the news agenda.
Could the flight of Russian drones into Polish airspace be just a careless overshot? After all, Putin’s army had just completed a mass drone attack on western Ukraine and the hub of Lviv, just 25 miles over the border from Poland.
Maybe – but the drones crossed on the same flight path as drones on several previous occasions. It is increasingly likely that this is part of an ongoing test of Nato and allied resolve, and effectiveness to respond to overt and covert provocation – especially the latter.
Vladimir Putin is now on a declared war path, and not interested in peace or diplomacy
Vladimir Putin is now on a declared war path, and not interested in peace or diplomacy, to try to close off the war in Ukraine in Russia’s favour. The keys to his wider strategy towards Donald Trump and the rest of the Nato alliance are dual: disruption and distraction.
The Russian leader now faces the prospect that his forces may not land a decisive blow with the autumn offensive. The goal is to take and hold the Donbas entirely, and to achieve this he has amassed 100,000 men. Yet the offensive is inching forward very slowly – Pokrovosk is still contested, and across the extended front some Russian forces are short of supplies, and water. Ukrainian forces are still holding on to Russian land opposite Kharkiv, and Sumy.
The second line of attack is saturation raids by drones and missiles on Ukrainian cities and civilian targets, to crack the morale of an already beleaguered population. In response long-range missile, drone, and guerrilla operations by Ukrainian forces have hit refineries, switching stations, logistics hubs, ammunition dumps and electronics factories.
Russia has lost 20 per cent of its refinery capacity; petrol rationing has started sporadically. The viability of the oil and gas distribution system is now vulnerable – it is not graced with its own air defences. American administrations, especially then-President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, warned against arming Ukraine with long-range weapons that could attack into Russia, for fear of triggering disorder, and even collapse.
There is no visible sign of general collapse so far – but we have fresh indications that Putin may not be able to continue his bid to conquer Ukraine for another year.
The Ruble is showing signs of instability, according to warnings from the central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina has warned. A booming war economy has stopped growing. There is even concern about the swelling number of war veterans, the physically and mentally injured – a far greater number than the tens of thousands after the Afghan operation of 1979 to 1989. Concerns are now openly expressed about what to do with the monster Russian army of more than 700, 000 who are now in Ukraine. Should the units be demobilised and brought back to Russia?
Given the uncertainties at home, and within the special military operation in Ukraine, the Kremlin appears to be increasing its covert and overt distraction tactics against Nato, especially the near neighbours like Poland, the Baltics and Finland. Britain has faced more than 90,000 Russian inspired cyber attacks in the past two years alone, according to General Sir Jim Heckenhull, commander of the new-minted Cyber and Special Operations Command.
The opportunity that the Kremlin must be sensing is that for Nato, the allies of the coalition of the willing, and the EU’s security apparatus, the favoured scheme of manoeuvre is... To dither. They meet, they discuss, they plan, they decide to meet again and then they plan again. There are two or three meetings about meetings occurring this very week.
The British government has pledged to ensure that this country is ‘secure at home, and strong abroad’ – the catchphrase of the new Defence Review, National Security Strategy, and Defence Industrial Strategy. Wors,e the more you look at these papers, the less compelling the narrative. Much of the already-announced increased spending on defence will not actually drop for another two years at the earliest. This another way of saying jam tomorrow, or, maybe even over the hills and far away.
Meanwhile there is a steady drip-feed of extra demands on the actual defence budget. These include the up to £10 billion for the Chagos Islands settlement, and at least £2.4 billion now for the emergency Afghan employees recovery mission; and very likely a substantial check for refurbishing barracks for asylum claimants.
The events in the skies of Poland and Qatar raise sharp questions for our own security and resilience, and that of our neighbourhood. We need to urgently assess the threat, and decide on a practical and realistic response, which can’t be allowed to get caught in the fog of Whitehall bureaucratic wars.
Robert Fox is Defence Editor at The London Standard
