Just after midnight, at least 19 Russian attack drones sliced into Polish airspace amid a mass strike on Ukraine.
Polish F-16s, backed by allied NATO jets, scrambled and engaged, shooting down three, possibly four, drones over Polish territory as debris fell well beyond the border belt. Multiple drones and debris were discovered hundreds of miles away from Ukraine, on which Russia has launched withering drone attacks in recent weeks.
By morning, Poland and NATO had determined it was not, as Moscow now claims, an accident.
Warsaw has now invoked NATO’s Article 4 for alliance consultations, with the Secretary General confirming allied air defenses were activated to protect Poland.
What is Article Four?
Article 4 consultations are NATO’s formal mechanism for a member state to bring up urgent security concerns to the North Atlantic Council for collective assessment and coordinated action. Unlike Article 5, Article 4 does not declare an attack or automatically trigger collective defense; it unlocks rapid, alliance-wide intelligence sharing, policy alignment and practical measures such as tighter rules of engagement, enhanced air policing, additional Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance coverage, and rotations of air- and missile-defense units.
Why this moment matters
This is the first known instance of NATO forces firing in defense of allied airspace during Russia’s full-scale war. This is an alliance shift from statements to action inside its borders. Poland’s framing is undeniably stark.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament this is “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.”
Several drones appear to have entered from or via Belarus, and European officials increasingly view the incursion as deliberate probing, not mere spillover.
The cellular angle — why this is getting more dangerous
Ukrainian and independent reporting show Russian drones increasingly integrate LTE/SIM-based communications, from Ukrainian SIMs found in downed drones to dual-LTE modem designs that ride civilian towers for telemetry, video and course correction.
Recent coverage even points to Polish and Lithuanian SIMs used in long-range UAVs — sharpening the threat to NATO territory if drones leverage Western networks for guidance, status and last-second retasking.
That connectivity extends control range, improves situational awareness, and complicates jamming, making cross-border incursions easier to execute and harder to stop.
Moscow’s calculus
Russia appears to be exploiting a saturation doctrine — hundreds of low-cost Shaheds plus missiles — to overload defenses and create “fog-of-war” plausible deniability when objects cross borders.
Last night’s result — kinetic defense plus Article 4 — raises the cost of that tactic, but it likely won’t end it. Expect repeat incidents during big salvos, where Moscow can still claim malfunction or drift while testing NATO’s reaction cycle and political cohesion.
Poland’s shootdowns and Article 4 move reset the red lines: Allied airspace violations now meet armed defense, not just denunciations. If Russia’s drones are tapping Western mobile networks, the alliance’s answer must pair harder skies with smart telecom countermeasures — before a 3 a.m. scramble ends with casualties on NATO soil.
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