In the latest instance of the war in Ukraine spilling over into neighboring countries, officials in Estonia say a Ukrainian one-way attack drone exploded inside that Baltic nation about 50 miles west of the border with Russia. They blamed Russian jamming for sending the drone off course, likely during an attack on a Russian gas processing plant near St. Petersburg.
While there have been previous incidents of attack drones flying into neighboring nations, this appears to be the first publicly known case of a Ukrainian drone entering a non-combatant’s airspace since a Tu-141 jet-powered one flew into Croatia in March 2022. In addition, aside from raising concerns about collateral damage, the Estonian drone incident highlights worries about how electronic warfare is affecting civilian aviation and communications.
A farmer found pieces of a drone and a crater in his field and called authorities, the head of Estonia’s Internal Security Service (ISS) told reporters Tuesday morning. There were no injuries or major property damage, however Estonian authorities warned that if the drone hit a residential building, the consequences could have been far more severe. Destruction of civilian buildings and infrastructure and resulting loss of life is a frequent occurrence in Ukraine.
“Based on very preliminary data, we estimate that the drone came down already in the early hours of Sunday, around 4 a.m. to 5 a.m.,” ISS Director General Margo Palloson told reporters on Tuesday, according to the official Estonian ERR news. “We have reason to believe that this may be a Ukrainian drone that was [targeting] inland Russian sites but was diverted from its course by Russia’s GPS jamming and other electronic warfare measures, causing it to veer into Estonian airspace. At this time, there is nothing to indicate that it could be a Russian drone.”
Russia “is using very strong GPS jamming and spoofing near our borders,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Estonian Postimees newspaper. “As a result, one day a drone ends up in Lithuania, the next day in Latvia, and now one has reached Estonia. These objects fly at very low altitudes to avoid detection by Russia, and that’s precisely why they are difficult to detect.”
Also on Sunday, another drone crashed into the Russian side of Lake Peipus, a large body of water separating eastern Estonia and western Russia, Estonian officials said. That same day, Ukraine carried out a drone attack on the Novatek gas processing complex. Located in the port of Ust-Luga, this is Russia’s largest liquefied gas producer, located about 20 miles from the Estonian border. Video emerged from the scene showing an explosion followed by a massive fire that is still burning.
You can see the results of that attack in the following video.
Speaking at the press conference, Pevkur said these incidents highlight the need for sensors that can detect low-flying drones.
“Can this create full blanket coverage?” he asked rhetorically. “Theoretically, yes — it depends on how many resources we put into it. Our capabilities will improve significantly. Whether it will be 100 percent coverage, time will tell. At the same time, the war in Ukraine shows that 100 percent coverage does not exist anywhere.”
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kristen Michal called for a “layered air defense” to prevent further incursions. While neither official offered specifics about what these sensors and defenses would be, a layered defense can help plug surveillance gaps, but the most effective way of surveilling for low and slow-flying drones, as well as other low-flying aircraft, is by providing persistent look-down radar capabilities. Airborne early warning and control aircraft can provide this but keeping one airborne continuously is extremely resource intensive. Poland is working to build a network of aerostats that carry look-down radars. They are designed to detect low-flying drones, as well as aircraft and cruise missiles. You can read more about that in our story here.
Last week, Polish officials said a suspected Russian drone crashed into a cornfield near the village of Osiny, about 60 miles southeast of Warsaw.
Polish Gen. Dariusz Malinowski, deputy commander of Armed Forces Operational Command, said it was a military drone propelled by a Chinese-produced engine, according to The Guardian. As we have previously reported, Chinese engines are a basic component of many Russian drones.
“I’ll say one thing that is certain: Russia will never admit to this,” said Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. “Just as it hasn’t admitted to any of the eight incidents in Moldova, three incidents in Romania, three in Lithuania, two in Latvia, or the one drone incident in Bulgaria.”
Meanwhile, frequent missile and drone attacks by Russia have led to multiple instances of NATO jets scrambling in response.
While this appears to be the first time a Ukrainian drone went off course into a non-combatant’s territory in more than three years, an errant Ukrainian air defense munition was suspected of killing two in Poland in 2022.
Beyond having errant weapons landing on neighboring countries, Ukraine’s drone campaign on Russia is playing havoc with civil aviation there. The latest example took place Sunday, when a passenger plane carrying Russians heading to St. Petersburg was forced to make an emergency landing in Estonia early Sunday morning due to the aforementioned Ukrainian drone attack, Postimees reported.
“The aircraft was rerouted to land in Tallinn, as it could not land at Pulkovo Airport due to a temporary closure,” Margot Holts, head of Communications and Marketing at Tallinn Airport, told the publication. The aircraft, operated by Egyptian carrier AlMasria Universal Airlines, had departed from Sharm El Sheikh and landed in Tallinn at 5:33 a.m. local time. It was able to continue its journey to St. Petersburg nearly six hours later.
The suspected Ukrainian drone crash also raises the specter of another major problem affecting countries outside the war zone. European governments have repeatedly accused Moscow of jamming GPS in recent years. The issue has been so concerning that last month, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) warned that Russian GPS jamming and other commercially-used signals near the Baltic Sea posed a “serious threat” to civilian aviation, especially in Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Sweden.
In addition, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg and Ukraine filed complaints last year after Russian interference reportedly “disrupted air traffic control systems and hijacked television broadcasts, including children’s programming, replacing them with war propaganda,” according to the Moscow Times.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a member of the UN, “demanded that Russia stop interfering with the satellite systems of European countries,” the publication reported. The ITU blamed “ground stations located in the areas of Moscow, Kaliningrad and Pavlovka” and demanded that Russia immediately cease its actions and investigate the incidents.
As we previously reported, last year, U.K. authorities confirmed that a Royal Air Force Dassault 900LX business jet transporting Grant Shapps, at the time the U.K. defense secretary, experienced GPS jamming while flying near Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave.
From our story at the time: “It’s critical to note that GPS jamming can be executed over a broad area. So it is difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty whether Shapps’ aircraft was specifically targeted and the U.K. has offered no evidence that directly points to that being the case. Still, its flight path would have been easily tracked via Russian radar and visible on flight-tracking websites.
It has also been pointed out that a very large number of other aircraft — some 511 according to open-source intelligence analyst Markus Jonsson — were also jammed on the same day in the region. Jonsson has also questioned the likelihood of jammers being directed against individual planes in a targeted fashion.”
All this comes as both Russia and Ukraine are doing everything they possibly can to produce as many long-range standoff attack weapons as possible. This also includes developing missiles and drones with increasing range and payloads. As we recently reported, Ukraine’s new Flamingo ground-launched long-range cruise missile is said to have a range of 1,864 miles (3,000 kilometers) and a warhead weighing 2,535 pounds (1,150 kilograms). That would make Flamingo a much farther-reaching and more destructive weapon than any missile or one-way-attack drone available to Ukraine now.
Russia, too, is making advances in its missile and drone technology.
The goal to all this is to ratchet-up the pace of long-range cross-border attacks. This snowballing race to field newer, deadlier and longer-reaching weapons and strike more frequently will only raise the risk of munitions straying into neighboring countries, and the possibility that a major inadvertent destructive event could add new volatility to the conflict.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com