Europe’s growing drone problem is a governance problem. The hardware exists. What is missing, across most of the continent, is the legal authority to deploy it, the jurisdictional clarity to coordinate it, and the political will to mandate either.
Until that changes, Europe’s critical infrastructure will remain exposed to attacks that are cheap to mount and catastrophically expensive to absorb.
This conclusion comes from primary research: a strategic intelligence briefing on governance of uncrewed aerial systems (UASs, or drones). This was conducted by Challenger Research in partnership with policy consultancy TWA, drawing on 23 stakeholder interviews across politicians, defence experts, strategic advisors and critical infrastructure professionals in Britain and Europe, alongside regulatory analysis of Britain, Poland, Germany and Italy. The findings have been consistent across every jurisdiction examined. Legal authority and jurisdictional fragmentation are fundamental constraints on effective counter-drone response. The available counter-UAS hardware cannot be lawfully deployed fast enough to matter in the few minutes between identification and response.
The scale of the problem is accelerating. Drone-related disruptions at European airports more than tripled between January 2024 and November 2025. Our research has found that the interval between detection and disruption at an airport is less than five minutes, yet few airports hold the legal authority to act on what they have detected. Runway closures, as seen in Copenhagen and Oslo last year, are enormously costly in flight cancellations. Across ports, energy networks and data infrastructure, critical national infrastructure operators can detect hostile UAS activity but are legally barred from taking active countermeasures. As one industry stakeholder put it plainly, ‘Rules of engagement are the primary issue. There is no ownership of responsibility.’
The drone’s strategic value has little to do with its physical payload. It is a tool for sowing confusion, eroding public confidence and forcing expensive defensive reactions from a cheaper offensive position. Russia only needs success in one EU country to land a blow felt across the entire bloc.
Our research has uncovered structural fragmentation. In Britain, the Civil Aviation Authority regulates civil UASs, police hold operational authority under the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Act 2021, and the Ministry of Defence’s jurisdiction is largely confined to its own estate. Electronic countermeasures require senior-level authorisation as well as approval from telecommunications regulators. Germany opened a Joint Drone Defence Centre in December 2025, but command remains civilian and proposed reforms to allow armed-forces involvement remain politically contested. Italy faces additional constraints under international law in offshore environments. Poland alone has moved decisively, adopting an effects-based jurisdiction model under Operation SAN that empowers police, border guard and armed forces simultaneously. Ambiguity is treated as a threat, not as a reason to pause.
The gap between Poland and its partners captures the broader European problem. A defence director interviewed for this research stated that Britain has had essentially no adequate air defence for 20 years. A Labour Party special adviser told us that ‘outside of a small group engaged in defence policy, no one is thinking about this.’ Our data, shown below, confirms this. Politicians clustered at the low end of both awareness and concern, while defence industry professionals registered the highest scores on both axes. Those with the greatest operational knowledge of the threat are the least able to move policy. Those with the power to act remain largely unaware of the urgency.
Several respondents raised the prospect of a mass-casualty attack in which the operator is more than 1,000 km from the strike zone. A UAS launched by a state actor or terrorist group could bring down an aircraft on approach, strike a high-visibility target or detonate inside critical infrastructure, with the aggressor already beyond reach before the smoke clears. That combination of lethality, deniability and distance is strategically novel. The political consequences would be enormous and the institutional overcorrection predictable: precisely the kind of sweeping, poorly targeted reform written in crisis rather than forethought, echoing what followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The case for a binding European framework is structural. Drones can transit multiple countries before reaching their targets. Fifteen drones observed above a Belgian military site in 2025 flew directly into Germany, tracked by police across the border. Europe’s collective exposure is determined by its least prepared member. A framework that harmonises neutralisation thresholds, assigns unambiguous jurisdictional authority, and brings civil aviation and critical national infrastructure into a common legal architecture would close the gap that adversaries are already exploiting.
Europe has the instruments and the data. The question is whether it builds its governance framework in advance of a crisis, or because of one.
