Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki demanded to know whether an air-to-air missile fired by one of its F-16 fighters during last week’s Russian drone incursion destroyed a house. The calls for an investigation follow a Polish media report that an AIM-120C-7 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) missile fired at a drone went off course, causing the damage.
Regardless of what happened, Russia is ultimately to blame for the destruction because it launched the drones, Poland’s prime minister proclaimed.
Nawrocki “expects the government to promptly clarify the incident in the town of Wyry,” the Polish National Security Bureau (BBN) stated on X . “It is within the Government’s purview to utilize all tools and institutions to resolve this matter as quickly as possible.”
Shortly after the drone incursion became public, Polish officials showed pictures of a house in Wvyry that had been destroyed during the wave of about 19 drones.
“It was an AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile from our F-16, which experienced a guidance system malfunction during flight and failed to fire,” the Polish RMF24 news outlet reported on Tuesday, citing an anonymous state security agency source. “Fortunately, it did not arm or explode because the fuse safety devices were activated.”
The publication said a former Polish military intelligence officer emphasized that the damage to the house was caused by kinetic impact.
“There was no explosion, no detonation, as can be seen in the photos of the destroyed house,” Lt. Col. Maciej Korowaj explained.
The AIM-120 has about a 40-pound blast fragmentation warhead.
While still unconfirmed, the RMF24 claim adds new context to initial reports that the remains of an AIM-120 were discovered among debris collected after the Russian drone flights into Poland. At the time, there were discrepancies about exactly where the missile remains were found and questions about who fired it.
“Seven unmanned aerial vehicles and the wreckage of one missile of unknown origin were found,” Karolina Galecka, a spokesperson for the Polish Ministry of the Interior, said on Sept. 10, after the wave of Russian drones subsided.
While the RFM24 report claims an F-16 fired the missile, Dutch F-35s, which also carry AIM-120s, took part in the counter-drone operation, as well.
As TWZ regularly points out, even the world’s best and most proven missiles fail. There are no exceptions to that rule. The rate at which it occurs can vary greatly, but missile technology is imperfect and misrepresented in the media as having almost shield-like abilities that aren’t reflective of reality. There is always a failure rate that must be assumed.
As we stated in our initial report on the drone flights, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that while at least three to four drones were shot down, another three to four appeared to have simply crashed in Polish territory.
On Tuesday, Tusk pointed the finger at Moscow for what happened to the home.
“All responsibility for the damage to the house in Wyrykach falls on the authors of the drone provocation, that is, Russia,” Tusk stated on X. “The appropriate services will inform the public, the government, and the president about all the circumstances of the incident after the proceedings are completed. Hands off Polish soldiers.”
BBN said that it is working to verify RMF24’s claims about the errant AIM-120 impact in part to ward off Russian disinformation that is a bit part of Moscow’s playbook.
“There is no consent for withholding information,” the bureau explained in its X post. “In the face of disinformation and hybrid warfare, the messages conveyed to Poles must be verified and confirmed.”
The bureau also expressed consternation that no official information was provided to the government about the missile claim.
“At the same time, the President emphasizes that he was not informed in this regard, nor was the BBN, and the matter was not presented or clarified at the National Security Council,” BBN noted.
In our previous stories about the drone wave into Poland, we noted that Tusk and other officials say Russia deliberately sent those weapons across the border during a massive attack on Ukraine.
“The Russian provocation was nothing more than an attempt to test our capabilities and responses,” Nawrocki claimed on Sept. 11. “It was an attempt to check the mechanism of action within NATO and our ability to react. Thanks to the wonderful Polish pilots and our allies, Poland, which is in NATO, will neither fear nor be frightened by Russian drones.”
Russian officials, meanwhile, claimed they did not target Poland.
In response to the incursions, NATO stood up Operation Eastern Sentry to help defend against future such events. The new effort will initially deploy a mixed force of fighter jets and an air defense frigate, but is eventually planned to expand to cover the region between the Arctic and the Black Sea, providing a bulwark against potential Russian drones and missiles. You can read more about that in our initial story about Eastern Sentry here.
It didn’t take long for the new NATO operation to kick in, as jets were launched Saturday in Romania and Poland to counter suspected Russian drones.
Romanian officials said two of its F-16 Vipers were sent aloft to intercept a Russian drone entering Romanian airspace at 6:05 p.m. local time on Saturday during another strike on neighboring Ukraine. The drone was not shot down.
The Romanian response, along with the one in Poland, marked the first activations of Eastern Sentry, a NATO spokesman told us on Saturday.
Whether the Polish home was destroyed by one of the nation’s air-to-air missiles or a Russian drone, the incident highlights the danger presented by drone incursions into an area just outside of an active war zone.
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