Why 'grey zone' drone attacks are a problem for NATO

Good morning. By my just top of the head, Moldova, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, all countries that have faced drone incidents against ships, against airliners. Is this Russia? Well, certainly in the case of Germany, the German government attributed an attack on one of their airfields to Russia. It's strongly suspected. In fact, Russia is the one with the motivation to be carrying out these drone attacks to determine, frankly, what are NATO's defenses and where they can exploit vulnerabilities. But one of the challenges with gray zone attacks is that the attribution is unclear. And if we continue to litigate them, then Russia can continue to probe. Until a plane comes down, we're seeing ships that are sinking, catching fire. Is there not a consequence at some point for that? Or is it all because we can't say definitively Russia did that? Well, consequence in this particular situation involves, prospectively, escalation. And it's a challenging situation for NATO to be in as a defensive alliance because what is NATO prepared to do to respond to attacks that have not as yet met the threshold of an armed attack, which would trigger NATO's Article 5? But clearly, we are in a situation now where Russia is attempting to provoke the alliance into some sort of reaction. And frankly, what their desired reaction would likely be is to remove our support from Ukraine. So it's a challenging situation for all concerned. In Canada, we have the natural defense of the Atlantic Ocean when it comes to the Russians. But you can fly a drone to Canada on a plane in a box and then launch it. Should we consider ourselves immune or just as much at risk as the Europeans are to these drone attacks? North America is a slightly different situation in that we protect our aerospace defense via NORAD that would respond to any air-based threat to North America. But yes, I mean, hybrid attacks are possible anywhere across NATO territory, including in North America. If you look at, I mean, one of the attacks that Ukraine launched on Russia was via drones shipped in sea containers. And we have large numbers of containers coming into both Canada and the United States, which are targeted for inspection based on intelligence. Not everyone gets looked at. But the critical point at this particular juncture is that Russia is clearly trying to understand NATO's resolve to respond to an attack, NATO's resolve to continue to support Ukraine, and try and disrupt the alliance unity to act as a collective whole. And so the most important thing that the alliance can do is to try and maintain that unity and to respond in a measured way to protect our territory, but also to effectively deter Russia from escalating its attacks in any manner. I hear you on unity. I do wonder about some of the practicalities of this. Airports keep getting shut down in Europe because there's drones around them. At some point, one might get sucked into an engine and a catastrophe could happen. but until then it is a significant nuisance and at times deadly as it has been on the Black Sea quite recently you know one of the a great challenge in this is that we don't really have a way to respond to drones how important is it for Canada for other NATO nations to figure out a way to be able to take these things down the these things that seem to be such the modern face of contemporary warfare? So drones exist in all shapes and sizes, from the type of hand-launched first-person view drone that you can go down to Best Buy and purchase, up to and including jet engine powered with significant destructive capability. So NATO as an alliance, in fact, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, SACEUR, who is the military commander of NATO forces, recently did a speech in Warsaw in which he outlined the military theory of victory which emphasizes that NATO as a defensive alliance will counter any threats to the territory and i mean that that involves matching threats with responses that are sustainable and frankly you know you don't want to launch a 15 million dollar drone against a five thousand or 15 million response against a $5,000 drone. That's ridiculous and frankly not sustainable. So there is a myriad of different things. Where large drones are attacking shipping, infrastructure, there are air defenses which can be launched, but those air defenses cannot protect 100% of every target at all of the time. You have to have the intelligence supporting it to be able to manage your defense. The critical thing right now for NATO is to continue to support Ukraine. Ukraine's loss of access, they believe, to the necessary targeting and intelligence information, but also their satellite links, that is hugely worrying. And the best way to deter Russia is to have an effective defense ourselves and to help Ukraine win. Wendy Gilmore, thank you very much. Thank you.