MCYSEKA-Maritime Cyber Security Knowledge Archive

NATO officials met in an emergency session after Russian drones were shot down over Poland. The intrusion prompted a rare coordinated shootdown effort by the alliance featuring Polish F-16s, Dutch F-35s, an Italian AWACS aircraft, a NATO aerial tanker, and German Patriot air defense systems, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters Wednesday. 

Moscow’s military used “more than 10 Russian Shahed drones” in the incident, which European Union Commission President Ursula von der Layen described as “a reckless and unprecedented violation of Poland and Europe’s air[s]pace.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy, “In total, at least several dozen Russian drones were moving along the border of Ukraine and Belarus and across western regions of Ukraine, approaching targets on Ukrainian territory and, apparently, on Polish territory,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “Our air defense forces destroyed more than 380 Russian drones of various types. At least 250 of them were [Iranian-designed] ‘shaheds.’”

“This is the first time NATO aircrafts have engaged potential threats in Allied airspace,” the alliance’s military spokesman said in a statement, and noted alliance members are “committed to defending every kilometre of NATO territory, including our airspace.”

After the intrusions, Poland invoked NATO’s Article 4, which is an agreement to meet among allies when one feels threatened. “A full assessment of the incident is ongoing,” Rutte said, stressing, “What is clear is that the violation last night is not an isolated incident.”

Rutte’s message to Russia: “Stop violating Allied airspace. And know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant, and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

POTUS reax: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” the U.S. president wrote on social media Wednesday morning, without elaborating. 

The view from Berlin: This was not “a matter of course correction errors or anything of that sort. These drones were quite obviously deliberately directed on this course,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. 

Canada’s prime minister called the incident “reckless and escalatory,” and vowed to “remain vigilant against Russia’s attempts to widen and prolong the conflict with Ukraine.” 

Even Putin ally Viktor Orban declared Hungary “stands in full solidarity with Poland following the recent drone incident,” and said on social media, “The violation of Poland’s territorial integrity is unacceptable.”

The U.S. ambassador to NATO threw his support behind the alliance in a short statement and vowed to “defend every inch of NATO territory.” 

Capitol Hill reax: “The Administration’s policy towards Russia is weak and vacillating, and Putin is taking advantage of it,” said Armed Services Committee member Rep. Don Bacon, R-Illinois, writing Wednesday morning on social media. 

“An act of war” is how fellow HASC member Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, described the incident, writing on social media as well. He added, “I urge President Trump to respond with mandatory sanctions that will bankrupt the Russian war machine and arm Ukraine with weapons capable of striking Russia. Putin is no longer content just losing in Ukraine while bombing mothers and babies, he is now directly testing our resolve in NATO territory.”

Two senators on the Foreign Relations Committee released a bipartisan statement criticizing President Trump for insufficient pressure on Moscow, writing, “It has been three weeks since President Trump met with Vladimir Putin. Since that time, Putin met with fellow autocrats in Beijing to conspire against America and returned to Moscow to escalate his illegal invasion of Ukraine,” said co-chairs of the Senate NATO Observer Group Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, and Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina. “Russia has now launched the largest aerial assault since the invasion began—firing more than 800 drones and missiles, setting Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers ablaze and killing civilians, including a mother and her infant.” 

“At the very moment Putin escalates, the United States appears to be cutting back,” the senators warn, flagging “Programs like Section 333 security cooperation, which includes the Baltic Security Initiative—lifelines for NATO’s eastern flank—[that] are now on the chopping block, even as Europe takes on more of the burden. The message this sends is dangerous: that the United States is pulling back just as the stakes in Ukraine and for NATO’s security are at their highest. Our adversaries are taking note that they can wait out American support—that does not make America safer.” 

“Putin has shown us time and again that he is a liar and a murderer. He never wanted peace,” said Shaheen and Tillis, who also encouraged the passage of new “legislation that imposes crippling sanctions on Putin’s regime” because “the cost of inaction to America’s security is too high.” 

Related: Russian officials “are engaging in a top-down Kremlin-organized effort to threaten Finland,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Tuesday assessment. Moscow’s threats include the allegation that Finland is becoming a “real hotbed of fascism faster than Ukraine” and that “nothing can be ruled out” in terms of a Russian military intervention into Finland, according to Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairperson Andrei Kartapolov on Tuesday. And that charge came one day after Dmitry Medvedev of Russia’s Security Council threatened Finland with “language that directly mirrored the Kremlin’s false justifications for its invasions of Ukraine,” ISW writes, warning these threats may be used “to justify future Russian aggression against a NATO member state.” 

Update: Russia is losing fewer troops as its invasion continues to progress across eastern Ukraine, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Tuesday assessment, citing statistics from Ukrainian officials. From May to August, Russia lost about “68 casualties per square kilometer seized,” compared to “an average of 99 casualties per square kilometer gained in January, February, March, and April 2025,” a half-dozen researchers write in ISW’s latest analysis.  

Behind the downward trend: Russia has changed how it uses drones in support of combat troops on the ground in an effort “largely led by UAV operators of Russia’s Rubikon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies,” ISW writes. That organization was established one year ago, but their operations picked up in early 2025 and have been boosted by the growing use of fiber optic aerial drones, which are impervious to jamming by Ukrainian forces along the frontlines. Background: “Russia began to proliferate Rubikon UAV units across the frontline in April and May 2025, and ISW has observed reports of Rubikon units operating in Kursk Oblast and throughout eastern Ukraine from northeastern Kharkiv Oblast to the Velykomykhailivka direction in western Donetsk Oblast.” More, here. 

For your ears only: Listen to CNA’s Sam Bendett discuss the Rubikon Center and much more in the latest episode of Defense One Radio: “How drone warfare is changing.” 

Additional reading: “Tanks Were Just Tanks, Until Drones Made Them Change,” the New York Times reported in a curious interactive on Monday. 

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1939, the British accidentally sank one of their own submarines near Norway, marking the Brits’ first sub loss of the war. Only two of the 55-man crew survived.  

Israel’s attack in Qatar

Gulf nations ask: if U.S. protection can’t stop an attack on Qatar, what good is it? That’s the gist of a New York Times article on the reverberations from Tuesday’s air strike that sought to kill Hamas officials in Doha.

Key quote: “Qatar being unable to protect its own citizens with literally the U.S. Central Command on its territory has prompted locals to question the value of the American partnership,” said Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a research group. “It’s a real problem for Gulf leaders. And it should worry the United States as well.”

WH spox: Trump “feels very badly” about the attack. The president learned about the attack from the U.S. military, and told envoy Steve Witkoff to tip off the Qatari government, Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday.  Eliminating Hamas is a “worthy goal,” Leavitt read from a prepared statement. “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” More from Axios, here.

NYT has an explainer on the attack, here.

Around the Defense Department

No DOW in NDAA. At least one lawmaker has tried and failed to make the Department of War renaming official, reports Reese Gorman of News of the United States. “An amendment introduced to the NDAA that would rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War—which requires an act of Congress—was not found in order by the Rules Committee.”

News summaries sent to National Guard leaders reflect public “fear” and troops’ “shame” over D.C. deployment, the Washington Post reports off copies of the summaries slipped to them. “Trending videos show residents reacting with alarm and indignation,” one summary, from Friday, said. “One segment features a local [resident] describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security — highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force.” More, here.

Trump’s DC “emergency” expires at midnight, but it’s not clear what will change in the nation’s capital. New York Times: “The end of the 30-day period has no bearing on the thousands of National Guard troops, drawn from the District of Columbia itself and from eight Republican-led states, who have been deployed to Washington. Neither does it directly affect the hundreds of additional federal law enforcement officers — from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies — who have been sent out into the city to patrol. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will continue to take people into custody around Washington, as they did long before the emergency was declared.” More, here.

New: Trump’s Pentagon chief spoke to his Chinese counterpart Tuesday, Pete Hegseth’s spokesman announced Wednesday in what to our knowledge is a first for Hegseth. 

In his phone call with Defense Minister Adm. Dong Jun, “Hegseth made clear that the United States does not seek conflict with China nor is it pursuing regime change or strangulation of the [People’s Republic of China]. At the same time, however, he forthrightly relayed that the U.S. has vital interests in the Asia-Pacific, the priority theater, and will resolutely protect those interests,” the Defense Department said in a short statement. 

INDOPACOM: “The homeland is in the Pacific.” In a Monday speech, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Samuel Paparo said he’s not concerned about reports that defending the homeland is the Pentagon’s new top priority. “The Indo-Pacific is the priority theater of the United States of America.” Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad has a bit more from Honolulu, here.

China is trying to strongarm Palau with soft power. Beijing is deliberately attempting to “erode leadership, disrupt vital services, and weaken confidence in government” in Palau, and has sent drugs to wash ashore on the Pacific nation to “weaken our community,” the country’s president said Monday. Hlad explains how, here.

Related: “Leaked files show a Chinese company is exporting the Great Firewall’s censorship technology,” reports Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

China’s submarine buildup, illustrated by the Wall Street Journal: “China is on the verge of becoming a world-class submarine power, with new technology and a bigger, better fleet that is gaining on the U.S. and its allies—spurring a new undersea arms race in the Pacific.” Find that here.

To keep up, a U.S. sub yard is turning to AI. “By the end of this year, our plan is to have every single person in our manufacturing shops—17 different businesses, basically across 550 acres—doing work based on the output of what AI tells us to go do. At the end of [2026] all of the people working on all of our ships will be directed by what AI tells us to do,” Brian Fields, the chief technology officer for HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division, said Tuesday. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has a bit more, here.

Speedboat strike

The Trump administration has sent a War Powers Resolution report to Congress laying out its justification for the deadly Sept. 2 attack on a speedboat in international waters. Quote: “In the face of the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories, we have now reached a critical point where we must meet this threat to our citizens and our most vital national interests with United States military force in self-defense.” Read more, via the War Powers Resolution Reporting Project, here.

Even with this required notice, the attack was unlawful in several ways, writes Marty Lederman,  a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, in Just Security. “…it’s likely that the President lacked any affirmative domestic authority to order the strike, and the strike itself appears to have violated several legal prohibitions.”

And the U.S. military broke a bedrock principle. “As I’ll discuss at the end of this piece, regardless of which laws might have been broken, what’s more alarming, and of greater long-term concern, is that U.S. military personnel crossed a fundamental line the Department of Defense has been resolutely committed to upholding for many decades—namely, that (except in rare and extreme circumstances not present here) the military must not use lethal force against civilians, even if they are alleged, or even known, to be violating the law.” Read that, here.

Related reading: 

• “Eight days later, questions linger about Venezuela boat strike” by Reuters; 
• “Inside the CIA’s secret fight against Mexico’s drug cartels”: another Reuters report;
• ICYMI: “Venezuela prepares for potential U.S. attack with armed drones designed by Iran,” the Miami Herald wrote late last month.

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