Dr Raluca Csernatoni
Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
A New Kind of Threat, Built on Civilian Infrastructure
Europe’s airspace faces increasing pressure. Since September 2025, unidentified drone incursions over airports, military sites, energy facilities, and nuclear locations across multiple European countries have led to repeated shutdowns at Copenhagen, Munich, Oslo, and Liège. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the Copenhagen incident[1] the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date. Germany’s air navigation service provider reported 225 drone-related disruptions[2] in German airspace by December 2025. Drones have appeared over Belgium’s Doel Nuclear Power Station, above Ramstein Air Base, and near military convoys in France. These are hybrid operations aimed at probing, disrupting, and intimidating below the level of armed conflict.
This is more than just an airspace security issue. It poses a governance challenge because both drones and counter-drone systems rely on the same civilian digital infrastructures, such as spectrum, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), mobile networks, cloud services, and edge computing, which support Europe’s economy, public services, and critical infrastructure.
What makes this moment unique is the nature of the technology involved. The drones causing these disruptions mainly rely on civilian Information Communication Technology infrastructure: commercial radio frequencies, Global Positioning System (GPS) and GNSS for navigation, mobile networks for command and control, cloud computing for data processing, and AI software for autonomous flight and target recognition. Counter-drone systems reflect this dependence, using spectrum monitoring, sensor fusion, edge computing, and machine-learning algorithms for detection and neutralisation. Both the threat and the response are rooted in the same communications ecosystems that support everyday civilian life.
This exemplifies the dual-use challenge, namely that the ICT backbone of modern European society also forms the operational infrastructure of a new generation of aerial threats, as underlined in the European Commission’s Action Plan[3] on Drone and Counter-Drone Security published in February 2026.
Blurring of Civil-Military Boundaries
The ongoing transformation extends far beyond isolated incursions. In the Russian conflict against Ukraine, drones have become the main tool for surveillance, targeting, and attrition. Over 819,000 video-confirmed[4] drone strikes were recorded in 2025. Ukraine’s drone ecosystem has expanded rapidly, with official reports indicating very large-scale domestic[5] production and delivery volumes by late 2025. Russia crossed the 500-drone mark in a single operation in September 2025. These systems are assembled from widely available commercial components and operate through civilian connectivity infrastructure. In this context, innovation cycles have shortened from decades to weeks, with new drone variants moving from prototype to battlefield deployment in days.
There is also an emerging drone-AI nexus, where inexpensive airframes converge with adaptive software for navigation, targeting, and coordination, which accelerates battlefield decision-making and expands operational scale. Machine vision, route optimisation, and autonomous swarm coordination already influence how drones are flown and how targets are prioritised. Even when human operators remain formally “in the loop”, their role is increasingly supervisory rather than deliberative. Importantly, accountability is fragmented across military, civilian, and private actors, and existing legal frameworks struggle to keep pace.
For the ICT community, the key message is clear. The technologies driving this transformation, from AI chips, software-defined radios, GPS modules, edge processors, to cloud platforms, are the same ones at the core of Europe’s civilian digital economy. The drone-AI connection also relies on the infrastructure that European citizens, businesses, and institutions depend on daily. Consequently, disruptions to this infrastructure, whether through electronic warfare, cyberattacks, or spectrum interference, ripple across civilian and defence areas simultaneously.
Why 6G Matters for Drone Resilience
The development of 6G and next-generation network architectures presents a clear opportunity to integrate resilience into European ICT infrastructure by design. But the governance problem is immediate rather than distant. Many of the vulnerabilities exposed by dual-use drones already sit within today’s mobile networks, GNSS dependencies, cloud services, and spectrum environments. Europe needs a bridge between near-term hardening and longer-term 6G design choices. 5G-Advanced (Release 18), expected from 2025, already incorporates improved positioning accuracy, AI-native network management, and enhanced sensing capabilities that could serve as interim resilience measures before full 6G deployment. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has named the next generation of mobile technology “IMT-2030”[6], with key features including AI-powered communications, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), and widespread connectivity. Several of these features are directly relevant to addressing the dual-use drone challenge.
Spectrum resilience is perhaps the most immediate concern. The electromagnetic environment now faces competition, with drones and counter-drone systems vying for spectrum access. Techniques like jamming and spoofing, which are widespread on the Ukrainian battlefield and increasingly seen in grey-zone operations across Europe, threaten the reliability of civilian communications. Future network architectures must incorporate dynamic spectrum management, interference-resistant waveforms, and cognitive radio capabilities that can adapt to rapidly changing conditions.
Equally exposed are positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems. GPS and GNSS vulnerabilities have been repeatedly exploited in the drone sector. Network-based positioning solutions, multi-source PNT fusion, and anti-spoofing measures integrated into 6G infrastructure would significantly enhance both civilian and defence resilience.
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) opens a different angle. Drone detection and classification increasingly rely on real-time sensor fusion and machine learning at the edge. The U.S. Department of War’s FutureG [7] Office has already recognised ISAC as a priority 6G capability for counter-drone applications, and Ericsson[8] has demonstrated a live drone-detection proof of concept using network-based sensing. Indeed, 6G architectures supporting distributed AI processing, low-latency inference, and secure civil-military data sharing would directly enhance counter-drone resilience across Europe.
Underpinning all of these is supply chain security. Both civilian ICT and military drone systems rely on the same global supply chains for semiconductors, sensors, and AI chips. European initiatives to secure these chains, including the European Chips Act[9], are directly relevant to both sectors.
Governance Gaps and the European Response
Europe has started to respond. The European Commission’s Action Plan on Drone and Counter-Drone Security describes counter-drone defence as a civil-military task covering homeland security and battlefield operations. It advocates a coordinated EU approach to detection, response, and industrial readiness, including a new EU Counter-Drone Centre of Excellence[10], a Drone and Counter-Drone Industry Forum, and a proposed “EU Trusted Drone” certification scheme. The plan also acknowledges the role of 5G networks in real-time drone tracking and recommends sovereign, AI-powered command and control systems. The EU Defence Industry Transformation Roadmap[11], adopted in November 2025, and the Readiness Roadmap 2030[12], published in October 2025 and framed politically through the White Paper for European Defence and ReArm Europe Plan / Readiness 2030 in March 2025, support these efforts, though both remain mainly focused on industrial capacity rather than the governance issues raised by AI-enabled drone warfare.
These are important steps. Yet the central gap is institutional rather than technological. The current policy landscape still treats ICT resilience and defence innovation as separate areas, which leaves spectrum governance, telecom security, AI assurance, cloud dependency, and procurement oversight insufficiently connected. Thus, the dual-use drone challenge requires closer collaboration between the ICT research community and security policy actors. For the drone challenge, similar cross-sectoral platforms are crucial, linking expertise in next-generation networks, AI, spectrum policy and security governance.
Conclusion
The growth of dual-use drones poses a systemic threat to the resilience of the ICT infrastructure on which European societies, economies, and defence capabilities rely. As Europe moves towards 6G and the next era of connected intelligence, the lessons from the drone-AI link should inform how we design, govern, and protect our communications networks. Resilient ICT is increasingly essential to sovereignty and democratic governance in an era of ongoing aerial challenges. A dedicated EU civil-military ICT resilience framework, linking European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), the European Defence Agency (EDA), and the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, would be a tangible first step towards the institutional architecture this challenge requires. Overall, what Europe needs is not only better technology, but a governance architecture capable of linking telecom policy, critical infrastructure protection, defence innovation, and democratic oversight. The ICT community has a key role to play, and the time to respond is now.
References
[3] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/drone-security
[6] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/study-groups/rsg5/rwp5d/imt-2030/pages/default.aspx
[7] https://rt.cto.mil/ddre-rt/science-and-technology-futures/futureg-home/
[8] https://www.ericsson.com/es/press-releases/6/2026/ericsson-isac-texas-poc
[9] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european-chips-act
[10] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/nl/speech_26_369
[12] https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-industry/readiness-roadmap-2030_en