On the 1st of January 2025 Poland announced building of an army of drones, designating around 50 million euros to this cause in 2025 alone. The benefits are manifold: rapid response, less military casualties as well as cost-effectiveness, just to name a few. Their main task is to protect the eastern border of Poland. However, at the same time drones can pose a direct threat to the very same border security. As Russian drones have been increasingly violating Polish airspace, their usage in hybrid warfare is becoming progressively clear. Drones’ usage helps to support the idea of plausible deniability, allowing the adversary to get away with testing NATO’s eastern flank. Such deliberate provocations aim at weakening Poland’s and NATO’s image as such actions are lingering just below the threshold of Article 5’s armed attack and usually remain without a unified response. Therefore, drones are becoming the weapon of choice in the increasing hybrid operations on our Eastern border, at the same time raising fears of Ukraine war spillover.

In my paper, I would like to focus on the benefits and risks of drones, giving as an example Polish military. I will try to identify the ways to mitigate the menace they pose on our very fragile Eastern border. As the drone armes race is well underway, their usage might threaten the very peace they are meant to protect. I would like to explore the current state of Polish army of drones and assess their advantages as well as their drawbacks. I would also like to explore the possible collective response of NATO to Russia’s drones’ usage in hybrid operations to reduce its risks on the Eastern flank. From grey-zone tensions and risks of miscalculation to strengthening deterrence and rapid response, the drone usage in military remains one of the most current security topics as there is no time to lose.

Paulina Spodniewska earned her M.A. in International Security Studies from Universität der Bundeswehr in partnership with the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

She has served as an Adjunct Faculty at the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies, where she delivered courses including Countering Transnational Organized Crime, the Program on Regional Security Studies, the Program on Cybersecurity Studies, and the Seminar on Irregular Warfare and Hybrid Threats. In this role, she trained senior officials on contemporary security policy developments, conducted research on security challenges in the context of geopolitical change, and analyzed regional security complexes and their dynamics.

Her professional interests focus on geopolitical competition, military and security applications of artificial intelligence as well as hybrid and cyber threats.

Paulina currently works for the United States Department of Defense. She is also engaged in NATO’s initiative aimed at equipping military education institutions with a foundational, adaptable framework to integrate AI into strategic, operational, and tactical curricula.