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I don't know to what degree this is known to people outside Europe, but has been on the news over here for the last few months: > drones aren’t just buzzing ai

by kleiba 11mo ago

I don't know to what degree this is known to people outside Europe, but has been on the news over here for the last few months: > drones aren’t just buzzing airports. They’re systematically surveilling military installations—often during sensitive operations Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure.

D_Alex 11mo ago
Ramstein is like 400 km from the sea, Munich is 800 km. I am puzzled that the alleged ship-launched drone swarms were allegedly able to penetrate this far undetected.
TheChaplain 11mo ago
There are plenty of people even inside Europe who downplay these events.
- GuestFAUniverse 11mo ago
  Often enough that coincidences with an unexplainable increase of wealth.
- jwr 11mo ago
  As someone who currently lives in Poland, I hope this will be a wakeup call for Western Europe, which has so far been living a medieval dream of "the aggressor is far away and there are countries between us and the aggressor, so we can carry on as usual". That used to be a valid assumption several hundred years ago, but now no longer holds. I hope the lukewarm support for Ukraine will become at least a bit stronger. And I really hope the EU will stop funding the Russian military machine. Not everyone realizes this, but just in October 2025, the five largest EU importers of Russian fossil fuels paid Russia nearly 1 billion €. ONE BILLION EUR per month. Compare that to the military aid we are sending to Ukraine. (source: https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/ https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-...)
  - piva00 11mo ago
    It disheartens me to see how Polish opinion on the EU has been systematically dismantled, not sure if it's mostly Russian propaganda but EU skepticism is growing a lot over there, given that Poland is right at the footsteps of Russia it does not bode well it's starting to turn on the EU...
    - gambiting 11mo ago
      Guess who else is very much interested in that happening..... "Leaked files ‘show US wants to persuade four nations to leave EU’ The countries seen as targets to follow Brexit are Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland, according to leaked details of the US national security strategy" https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/us-mega-eu-trump-pqhz8gplr https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/us-meg...
      - benterix 11mo ago
        Well, this was the case decades ago, too, just few people paid attention. The US made sure their interests are always put before Polish interests, and these were regularly reported by the US embassy in Warsaw. See e.g.:[0] "Rozanski went on to explain that Polish food products are viewed in the EU as healthy and natural, and are competitive in their current state. Use of GM seeds could threaten this perception, and thus Poland's place in the market. When Spirnak and Embassy Agricultural Counselor noted that such an approach would be of great concern to the U.S. and would be contrary to EU as well as WTO commitments, Rozanski backed off and said that Poland must comply with EU and international commitments (Note: Rozanski softened this message further at a subsequent meeting that Agricultural Counselor attended)." [0] https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06WARSAW107_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06WARSAW107_a.html The bright point is, since it's more or less clear that the US basically stopped caring much about Europe militarily, the "great concern to the U.S." cited above is not that relevant. Trump basically destroyed most of the soft power the USA had over Europe.
  - egorfine 11mo ago
    > As someone who currently lives in Poland Same here. > I hope this will be a wakeup call for Western Europe It has been a wake up call for Poland for sure. EU will not wake up, sadly.
krapp 11mo ago
>Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure. Something like that has happened in the US recently but Americans believed they were alien spacecraft as they tend to do and the whole thing got swallowed up in memes and Reddit threads. Also apparently the US is ride or die with Putin now so Russia can't have done anything of the sort. Must have been aliens.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
dragonelite 11mo ago
Of course the Russians will do this we helped Ukrainians attack the Russian nuclear fleet with drones they are most definitely organising some payback actions. Be glad stuff isn't exploding yet, we are at war with Russia. Did people expect no damage would happen inside Europe?
derelicta 11mo ago
[flagged]
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
Nextgrid 11mo ago
Are any of those drones being shot down? Is anything being done about it besides (AI-assisted) fear-mongering? That is the real question. If the drones are a problem, shoot/neutralize them and thank Russia for the free target-practice exercise. It seems like the danger even bigger than Russia is government incompetence and the system of broken incentives where everyone does everything to appear busy but actually solving the problem. If there's a drone there, and you don't want it there, the solution is obvious. It's obvious enough to any nutcase in the US with access to a shotgun (with various degrees of success, but at least they're got the right spirit). If nobody's taking out the proverbial shotgun then I have to assume the drones are not an actual problem and merely yet another excuse for busywork. Edit: I am not saying to literally use a shotgun against them. But offensive solutions need to be developed and put to use; otherwise if we sit helpless now, what will we do when those drones evolve and start carrying offensive payloads? Fear-mongering and finding endless excuses about not doing anything is not going to help.
- flohofwoe 11mo ago
  How would you 'shoot them down' over densely populated areas without endangering civilians, genius? In reality it's a bit more complicated, e.g. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-allow-police-shoot-down-drones-2025-10-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-a... Also it's not like the US did any better when their airports and military bases had those massive drone sightings a little while back, except in that case it wasn't the Russians but "aliens" (lol).
- jonathanstrange 11mo ago
  The Dutch military fired on drones. However, they are all over Europe and generally not shot down for various reasons. First, shooting at them can be very dangerous. Debris and whatever is used to shoot at them (usually bullets) can hit civilians. Second, the laws tend to not allow military and police to shoot at drones that don't pose an immediate threat to life. A new police law has been passed in Germany to fix this issue, but it was only passed very recently. I suspect other countries have similar legal issues that first need to be fixed.
- mytailorisrich 11mo ago
sonorous_sub 11mo ago
Thank you for your service.
otabdeveloper4 11mo ago
Try giving Ukraine more drones, maybe that will fix your problem.
BSDobelix 11mo ago
Those Russian drone sightings remind me a lot of the "Russian" submarines off the coast of Sweden in the '80s. Hint: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-War-Against-Sweden-Submarine/dp/0714682756 https://www.amazon.com/Secret-War-Against-Sweden-Submarine/d...
jillesvangurp 11mo ago
The political question here isn't why intelligence agencies aren't all over this but why politicians are deciding to not do anything about it. A bunch of kids were able to figure out which ships were the source of these drones. Good work. I assume/hope this information wasn't new to intelligence agencies. Relevant questions to ask here: - were these ships not tracked and monitored 24/7 since they left Russian ports? - in fact aren't all ships that leave those ports not tracked? - isn't the journey of ships in the so-called shadow fleet documented in detail so that it is exactly known what's on board and who is buying it? The answer to this is: of course that is all happening and known. And the obvious one: why weren't these ships dragged to a port and completely dismantled to the last bolt? Answer to that: that would be an escalation as these ships are in international waters and protected by maritime law. The obvious counter to that is that military aerial activity launched from foreign ships technically is an escalation in itself that could be considered a direct act of war. I'm not going to speculate further on this. But it's obviously a highly political topic and not some kind of intelligence failure.
CapricornNoble 11mo ago
plays world's smallest violin Here in the First Island Chain we've had Chinese drones buzzing our military installations since before COVID. In Afghanistan, Yemen, or Somalia, the sound of drones buzzing overhead usually means an entire family is about to get murdered because ONE guy's pattern of behaviors pegged him as a "terrorist" in some computer system. Europeans are just finally being shaken out of their false sense of security and don't know how to handle it.
BobaFloutist 11mo ago
It would certainly make me feel motivated to fund my military, and send military aid and seized Russian assets to Ukraine.

by kleiba 11mo ago

D_Alex 11mo ago

Ramstein is like 400 km from the sea, Munich is 800 km. I am puzzled that the alleged ship-launched drone swarms were allegedly able to penetrate this far undetected.

TheChaplain 11mo ago

There are plenty of people even inside Europe who downplay these events.

GuestFAUniverse 11mo ago
Often enough that coincidences with an unexplainable increase of wealth.
jwr 11mo ago
As someone who currently lives in Poland, I hope this will be a wakeup call for Western Europe, which has so far been living a medieval dream of "the aggressor is far away and there are countries between us and the aggressor, so we can carry on as usual". That used to be a valid assumption several hundred years ago, but now no longer holds. I hope the lukewarm support for Ukraine will become at least a bit stronger. And I really hope the EU will stop funding the Russian military machine. Not everyone realizes this, but just in October 2025, the five largest EU importers of Russian fossil fuels paid Russia nearly 1 billion €. ONE BILLION EUR per month. Compare that to the military aid we are sending to Ukraine. (source: https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/ https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-...)
- piva00 11mo ago
  It disheartens me to see how Polish opinion on the EU has been systematically dismantled, not sure if it's mostly Russian propaganda but EU skepticism is growing a lot over there, given that Poland is right at the footsteps of Russia it does not bode well it's starting to turn on the EU...
  - gambiting 11mo ago
    Guess who else is very much interested in that happening..... "Leaked files ‘show US wants to persuade four nations to leave EU’ The countries seen as targets to follow Brexit are Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland, according to leaked details of the US national security strategy" https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/us-mega-eu-trump-pqhz8gplr https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/us-meg...
    - benterix 11mo ago
      Well, this was the case decades ago, too, just few people paid attention. The US made sure their interests are always put before Polish interests, and these were regularly reported by the US embassy in Warsaw. See e.g.:[0] "Rozanski went on to explain that Polish food products are viewed in the EU as healthy and natural, and are competitive in their current state. Use of GM seeds could threaten this perception, and thus Poland's place in the market. When Spirnak and Embassy Agricultural Counselor noted that such an approach would be of great concern to the U.S. and would be contrary to EU as well as WTO commitments, Rozanski backed off and said that Poland must comply with EU and international commitments (Note: Rozanski softened this message further at a subsequent meeting that Agricultural Counselor attended)." [0] https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06WARSAW107_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06WARSAW107_a.html The bright point is, since it's more or less clear that the US basically stopped caring much about Europe militarily, the "great concern to the U.S." cited above is not that relevant. Trump basically destroyed most of the soft power the USA had over Europe.
- egorfine 11mo ago
  > As someone who currently lives in Poland Same here. > I hope this will be a wakeup call for Western Europe It has been a wake up call for Poland for sure. EU will not wake up, sadly.

krapp 11mo ago

>Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure. Something like that has happened in the US recently but Americans believed they were alien spacecraft as they tend to do and the whole thing got swallowed up in memes and Reddit threads. Also apparently the US is ride or die with Putin now so Russia can't have done anything of the sort. Must have been aliens.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

dragonelite 11mo ago

Of course the Russians will do this we helped Ukrainians attack the Russian nuclear fleet with drones they are most definitely organising some payback actions. Be glad stuff isn't exploding yet, we are at war with Russia. Did people expect no damage would happen inside Europe?

derelicta 11mo ago

[flagged]

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

Nextgrid 11mo ago

Are any of those drones being shot down? Is anything being done about it besides (AI-assisted) fear-mongering? That is the real question. If the drones are a problem, shoot/neutralize them and thank Russia for the free target-practice exercise. It seems like the danger even bigger than Russia is government incompetence and the system of broken incentives where everyone does everything to appear busy but actually solving the problem. If there's a drone there, and you don't want it there, the solution is obvious. It's obvious enough to any nutcase in the US with access to a shotgun (with various degrees of success, but at least they're got the right spirit). If nobody's taking out the proverbial shotgun then I have to assume the drones are not an actual problem and merely yet another excuse for busywork. Edit: I am not saying to literally use a shotgun against them. But offensive solutions need to be developed and put to use; otherwise if we sit helpless now, what will we do when those drones evolve and start carrying offensive payloads? Fear-mongering and finding endless excuses about not doing anything is not going to help.

flohofwoe 11mo ago
How would you 'shoot them down' over densely populated areas without endangering civilians, genius? In reality it's a bit more complicated, e.g. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-allow-police-shoot-down-drones-2025-10-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-a... Also it's not like the US did any better when their airports and military bases had those massive drone sightings a little while back, except in that case it wasn't the Russians but "aliens" (lol).
jonathanstrange 11mo ago
The Dutch military fired on drones. However, they are all over Europe and generally not shot down for various reasons. First, shooting at them can be very dangerous. Debris and whatever is used to shoot at them (usually bullets) can hit civilians. Second, the laws tend to not allow military and police to shoot at drones that don't pose an immediate threat to life. A new police law has been passed in Germany to fix this issue, but it was only passed very recently. I suspect other countries have similar legal issues that first need to be fixed.
mytailorisrich 11mo ago

sonorous_sub 11mo ago

Thank you for your service.

otabdeveloper4 11mo ago

Try giving Ukraine more drones, maybe that will fix your problem.

BSDobelix 11mo ago

Those Russian drone sightings remind me a lot of the "Russian" submarines off the coast of Sweden in the '80s. Hint: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-War-Against-Sweden-Submarine/dp/0714682756 https://www.amazon.com/Secret-War-Against-Sweden-Submarine/d...

jillesvangurp 11mo ago

The political question here isn't why intelligence agencies aren't all over this but why politicians are deciding to not do anything about it. A bunch of kids were able to figure out which ships were the source of these drones. Good work. I assume/hope this information wasn't new to intelligence agencies. Relevant questions to ask here: - were these ships not tracked and monitored 24/7 since they left Russian ports? - in fact aren't all ships that leave those ports not tracked? - isn't the journey of ships in the so-called shadow fleet documented in detail so that it is exactly known what's on board and who is buying it? The answer to this is: of course that is all happening and known. And the obvious one: why weren't these ships dragged to a port and completely dismantled to the last bolt? Answer to that: that would be an escalation as these ships are in international waters and protected by maritime law. The obvious counter to that is that military aerial activity launched from foreign ships technically is an escalation in itself that could be considered a direct act of war. I'm not going to speculate further on this. But it's obviously a highly political topic and not some kind of intelligence failure.

CapricornNoble 11mo ago

plays world's smallest violin Here in the First Island Chain we've had Chinese drones buzzing our military installations since before COVID. In Afghanistan, Yemen, or Somalia, the sound of drones buzzing overhead usually means an entire family is about to get murdered because ONE guy's pattern of behaviors pegged him as a "terrorist" in some computer system. Europeans are just finally being shaken out of their false sense of security and don't know how to handle it.

BobaFloutist 11mo ago

It would certainly make me feel motivated to fund my military, and send military aid and seized Russian assets to Ukraine.