The graveyard shift inside Nato‘s Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Germany. For the watchkeepers, just another night staring into the electronic abyss of monitors and screens.
They are used to watching hundreds of Russia‘s mass- produced drones pounding Ukraine’s cities, setting apartment blocks ablaze. Agonising to watch from afar, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Then something disturbing draws an observer closer to the bank of computers. A squadron of Russian drones, after lifting off from Belarus, has banked starboard towards Poland.
Emergency procedures are triggered. Lights flash and Nato’s digitally integrated Air Command and Control System takes over.
At about 10pm local time on Tuesday, the Polish military received its first reports of a massive drone attack being launched by Russian forces on Ukraine.
The first incursion into Polish – and therefore Nato – airspace is then recorded at 11.30pm local time.
These drones appear to be heading towards the city of Zamosc, 43 miles inside Poland’s border with Ukraine – too far from the warzone to have strayed off course.
At Poland’s Poznan Krzesiny airbase, headquarters for Nato’s air policing mission, Dutch F-35s are scrambled.
Multiple Russian drones moving from Ukraine airspace into Poland’s
Polish television channel TV Republika shared this image of one of the downed drones
Photos show the extent of damage to a house in Poland after Putin’s drones were flown in
So too a Polish Airborne Early Warning (AEW) Saab 340 aircraft, while an Italian plane with similar capabilities is re-tasked and heads to the airspace.
While in Warsaw, senior defence figures prepare a briefing for Polish prime minister Donald Tusk and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.
Friends of old, they will be in constant contact through the night.
On the ground, Polish territorial army soldiers are summoned from their beds to deploy to crash sites.
By 2.30am on Wednesday, all civilian aircraft are grounded at four of the country’s major airports, including Chopin, the main airport serving Poland’s capital Warsaw.
Black Hawk helicopters are scrambled as a last line of defence and to support Polish troops in case this is phase one of a Russian invasion.
The Polish public is warned to stay indoors. The F-35s engage the drones with air-to-air missiles.
Unknown to the pilots these Gerbera decoy drones are not equipped with any payloads, at least not any explosives.
Donald Tusk holding an emergency meeting on Wednesday with senior officials after Russia’s actions
Senior army officials, including the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Wieslaw Kukula, are at the extraordinary meeting
Tonight’s mission, months in the planning according to defence insiders, is intended to test Nato defences but may have a more sophisticated purpose too. Russia could be testing its ability to transmit live battlefield intelligence back to its headquarters after its drone log on to mobile phone networks.
If the capability is proven, a real attack, rather than tonight’s incursion, as it has been described by Nato, would include drones being directed in-flight towards targets. The fear is based on recent incursions by Russian drones into Nato airspace.
In recent months, Polish and Lithuanian SIM cards have been found in the wreckage of these drones, suggesting a Kremlin plot to connect the drones to local mobile networks.
Through the night, the situation is also monitored at the Ministry of Defence in London.
Closer to the action, British troops in Poland are put on standby. There’s shock at how far inside Poland these drones are flying. Previous probing operations have involved one or two drones flying only a few miles inside Poland.
Tonight is different.
At least one of the drones that evaded Poland’s seemingly porous defences was located in the village of Mniszkow in the central Lodz region, 150 miles from the Ukrainian border.
Drones or parts of drones were found in eight locations in Poland, according to Polish officials. At a ninth site, objects of unknown origin were found.
A house was hit in the village of Wyryki in the Lublin region near the Ukrainian border, Mayor Bernard Blaszczuk told the TVP Info television news channel. The roof was severely damaged, but no one was hurt.
The last of Russia’s drones is downed at 6.30am local time.
Around this time, a relieved and exhausted prime minister Tusk calls an emergency meeting of ministers responsible for national security, to be followed by a full government meeting.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is awoken with the news and takes to social media at 8.15am Polish local time, warning the incursion represents ‘an extremely dangerous precedent for Europe’.
He accuses Russia of ‘pushing the boundaries of what is possible’, a message echoed in capitals across the continent, including London.
Officially, Poland’s and Nato’s response mission concludes at 7.42am local time when air defences and radar systems resume normal activity. However, on the ground, a major intelligence-gathering operation is just beginning.
Areas where the drones landed have been sealed off ahead of fingertip searches for technical clues. According to early reports, Poland shot down only four of the 19-24 drones (figures vary)launched by Russia – a much lower success rate than Ukraine usually achieves.
That means there is a lot of hardware for Nato to study.
As the Kremlin mischievously releases a statement claiming there were ‘no plans to hit targets Polish territory’ – not to hit, rather to observe at close range – so the searches begin.
According to reports last night, the Russian drones followed flight paths aligned with major roads and radar stations towards Warsaw and Lublin.
Five drones fell along within range of three highways the E30 motorway and the 63 and 82 highways, others near the defence industry hub of Stalowa Wola.
