NATO's reluctance to shoot down Russian drones: What lessons can it learn from Ukraine's air defense

Defense Express writes about it. 

The article says that NATO, wary of "escalation," still refuses to make the bold call to shoot down Russian drones and missiles using its own air defense systems and aircraft. After the Shahed crashed in Latvia, the country’s defense minister downplayed the event, saying it didn’t represent an open military escalation, claiming Latvia wasn’t the intended target.

Recently, General James Hecker, Commander of US Air Forces in Europe and NATO Air Command, acknowledged the growing number of incursions by Russian drones and missiles into NATO airspace. 

However, NATO still doesn’t treat these incidents as deliberate provocations or calculated risks. Meanwhile, Russia’s surveillance drones are already operating brazenly deep into NATO territory. In one case from August, a Russian Orlan drone was spotted over Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein region, flying above an industrial area, including a decommissioned nuclear plant.

This reluctance to act suggests that NATO might not give countries like Poland or Romania the "green light" to shoot down Shahed drones or Russian missiles in the near future. 

Hecker, however, stressed the importance of integrated air defense for the alliance. To detect these drones more effectively, NATO may need to borrow a page from Ukraine’s playbook and adopt similar technology.

He was referring to the Sky Fortress acoustic detection system, which uses around 9,500 sensors to send data to soldiers' tablets, improving their ability to spot and shoot down aerial threats.

• NATO spokeswoman Farah Dakhlallah has stated that the Alliance currently has no evidence suggesting that the crash of a Russian drone in Latvia was intentional.