Europe needs a counter drone network, not a wall
ATHENS, Greece and LONDON, UK, October 2, 2025 — A few nights ago, Ukrainian armed forces intercepted 611 out of the 643 Russian drones attacking its population. The following day, at the Resilience Conference in London, a member of a leading Ukrainian air defense regiment was asked how he thought EU countries would perform if they faced a similar threat. His diplomatic silence said it all.
We’ve been calling on European leaders to act with greater urgency on this threat for years, so we welcome today’s meeting in Denmark to discuss the proposed ‘drone wall’. We worry though that the ‘wall’ metaphor obscures what needs to be done.
Europe does not need a singular line of defense, composed of one element, as a ‘wall’ implies.
As Shashank Joshi says, what Europe actually needs “is more & more diverse sensors to detect drones, more low-cost means of interception & layered defenses for threats of different size, speed and value”.
In other words, Europe needs a network. Not a wall.
This network needs software to link every node - every sensor and effector - to prevent a fragmented system that leaves gaps in Europe’s defense.
The network must be autonomous. Yes, we can still have humans in the loop. But we cannot have the legacy approach of manned forces monitoring siloed products, manually directing them as required. That approach is too slow, too expensive, and too easily overwhelmed by swarms. To avoid this Europe’s counter drone network must be heavily automated.
Where there are blind spots, we need to deploy new sensors - cameras, radar, acoustic, or others. But to reduce costs we also must integrate the existing sensors (mainly radar and cameras) that militaries have already deployed along their borders.
Computation must be done at the ‘edge’ so the network can function at the scale and speeds required.
It also must be interoperable, so governments are not locked into a single system.
Delian has been building the foundations of such a system since 2021. Our autonomous surveillance network is already being scaled nationwide in one NATO member state.
We fuse every sensor - new and legacy - into a single software brain to detect, track and geolocate threats, including drones. This provides a single interface for end users to easily detect drone threats to their citizens.
As a next step, we are keen to collaborate with others across Europe to protect the continent in a new era of warfare.
About Delian Alliance Industries
Delian Alliance Industries is a defense technology company focused on autonomous systems for situational awareness and anti-access/area denial (A2/AD). Delian’s team combines expertise in AI, software, electronic warfare, and rapid manufacturing. Its systems are designed to be low cost, deployed in mass, and sovereign. Delian has offices in Athens and London and is backed by leading European venture capital funds, while its systems are already deployed in mission critical operations along the European borders.