Can NATO innovate fast enough to counter Russia’s growing drone threat?

Firefighters at work hours after Russian drones violated Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine, in Wyryki-Wola, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland. Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Days after the wail of air-raid sirens and the roar of NATO fighter jets punctuated a peaceful late-summer night in eastern Poland, the key question in Europe is not only whether Moscow deliberately sent nearly two dozen drones into NATO airspace, but what the military response reveals about the alliance’s long-term ability to deal with this growing threat.

If this was, as Poland believes, a deliberate test of NATO’s defenses, it was a remarkably cheap experiment for Russia.

Polish authorities recovered fragments of what it said were Gerbera drones, made of plywood and Styrofoam, and often used as decoys. Ukraine’s de