In the early morning hours on September 10, more than a dozen Russian target drones crossed into Polish airspace, before less than a dozen were shot down by Dutch F-35s. The infiltration sparked concerns about escalation between NATO and Russia and kick-starting a war between a nuclear-armed alliance and the world’s largest nuclear power. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that the country is closer to military conflict “than at any time since the second world war.” Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, told the media that he would support shooting down Russian drones over Ukrainian airspace, a nod to the longstanding idea of imposing a no-fly zone over parts of Ukraine.

Sikorski correctly indicated that Western air forces have the capability to shoot down the drones Russia is firing every night into Ukrainian territory. However, the equipment that NATO air forces are now fielding to protect Polish air space—as part of an operation dubbed “Eastern Sentry”—is ill-suited to the task. European militaries should use this crisis to rapidly field laser guided air-to-air rockets on European-made fighters to increase the cost effectiveness—and combat capabilities—of the air forces now tasked with defending the alliance’s borders with Russia and Belarus.

The Dutch F-35s assigned to the air policing mission appear to have shot down three Geran-2 drones that night. The Geran-2 is a derivative of the Shahed-136, itself a delta-wing derivative of a German-designed Dornier DAR (Die Drohne Antiradar) target drone. The drone’ s history is instructive: It was conceived as a relatively low-cost way to fire anti-radar munitions from a truck that could then loiter, evade emitting radars, and attack them from standoff ranges.

Iran (and many others) have adapted the design. Russia has further iterated on this basic concept and now uses these drones nightly as cheap cruise missiles, either to attack radars (as originally intended) or simply to strike targets. The drones are slow. They do not perform aggressive maneuvers. Therefore, they can be made with very cheap materials. They also have spawned a decoy derivative, dubbed Gerbera, which can be even flimsier than their armed counterparts, allowing for a balsa wood airframe construction. NATO is now tasked with defending its airspace from both Russian bombers and Russian balsa wood. It is important not to use the same tools for both.

The issue is not, as Sikorski correctly notes, the ability of any modern air force to shoot down these drones. They are slow and not particularly stealthy. However, the tools to do so were designed to shoot down aircraft and are therefore far more expensive than the Russian weapons they are sent to kill. The cost-exchange ratio has gotten far more attention in recent years. The United States has developed exquisite and highly capable aircraft and missiles, only to use these multi-million dollar machines to shoot down cheap and plentiful weapons slapped together by rogue regimes. It is tempting to look only at the purchase cost and decide about the value proposition of a drone turkey shoot—and conclude that the defending side, armed with Western kit, may be frittering away millions of dollars of weapons to defeat a cost-effective swarm.

This simplistic way of looking at things misses out on the value of territory being defended and the “cost” of allowing one’s citizens to be terrorized rather than defended (even if the tools aren’t economically ideal for the task).

The likelihood of NATO shooting down Russian drones over Ukraine is slim. However, NATO air forces will now be asked to be far more aggressive in defending allied air space. Eastern Sentry is certain to include a lot of fresh air and naval assets, armed with either American- or European-built missiles not well-suited to shoot down low-cost drones. This should spur a serious change in the arming of NATO air forces—and should prompt European bureaucrats to move fast on procuring the right armaments to do so.

At defense events all over the world, companies—both small and large—are keen to sell new designs for low-cost drone defense. These defenses range from missiles to lasers to rockets to lasers to jammers. These designs all will have a role to play in future air defense planning, and should get a look from major Western militaries. Yet, in the short term, European militaries should rapidly procure the American-made air-to-air optimized variant of the laser-guided 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) rocket. These are the systems that the United States belatedly made the decision to procure—and then rapidly fielded—for the counter-drone mission in the Middle East. These rockets are cheap and plentiful. They are better than the AMRAAM for drone defense. And they should be rapidly integrated into the Eurofighter, Rafale, or Gripen.

These rockets cost roughly the same amount as the weapons that are being fired at Ukraine. They also worked well in multiple US engagements in the Middle East to defend Israel from the same drones now terrorizing Poland. They can and should be integrated quickly into NATO’s planes, which can and should be used to defend NATO airspace.

The European security landscape is changing. The United States is clearly testing NATO’s European members to do more to defend their own territory. Europe is responding. A no-fly zone over Ukraine isn’t likely. However, this should not stop European air forces from fielding a combat proven, cost-effective defense against Russian drones. The APKWS is the best option on the market. It can be fielded rapidly. And it is a good test for European bureaucracies now tasked with moving faster to re-arm its forces to defend the continent from a revanchist Russia.

Image: Soldiers walk next to a site where a roof of a house was destroyed, after Russian drones violated Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine, September 10. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel