Europe has a Russian drone problem. Here are ways it could be solved

VINSKI, Estonia (AP) — Estonia is extending a fence along its border with Russia and building anti-tank ditches and bunkers in preparation for a potential conflict with Moscow. But those defenses won’t guard against the threat that Estonia and its NATO allies face from Russian drones and electronic warfare.

From the Baltics to the Black Sea, countries bordering Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are facing the spillover from Moscow's war in Ukraine.

The incursion of about 20 Russian drones into Poland this month shone a spotlight on holes in NATO's air defenses, as multimillion-dollar jets had to be scrambled to respond to drones that cost thousands and that ended up crashing into the Polish countryside. Russia denied that it targeted Poland, but Polish officials suggested that it was intentional.

Faced with a growing problem, some European Union defense ministers will meet Friday to discuss creating a “drone wall."

NATO warned Russia on Tuesday that it would defend against any further breaches of its airspace, after Estonia said that Russian fighter jets violated it last week. But although the alliance knows how to identify threats from jets and missiles, dealing with drones is a greater challenge, officials said.

In Poland, “most of the drones were not detected," Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said. “This is a real gap we have to solve.”

Military and defense officials from the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — NATO and EU members that border Russia — told The Associated Press that defending against drones requires solving a complex set of technological, financial and bureaucratic problems.

Europe needs cheaper technology to buy and to speed up slow production and procurement cycles, they said. But even then, drone technology is advancing so quickly that anything bought now could be outdated in months.

“What I need,” said Lt. General Andrus Merilo, who commands Estonia's military, is technology that is “good enough, it’s affordable and can be produced in mass.”

“I don’t need high-end capabilities of which I can fire only one, against targets which will be attacking in hundreds,” he said.

Russia is using drones every night in Ukraine, because each drone is a “lottery ticket that always wins,” said Kusti Salm, a former top official at Estonia’s Defense Ministry.

That’s because a drone either hits something or, if Ukraine shoots it down with a missile, it drains Kyiv's air defenses and finances, since missiles are more expensive than drones, said Salm who now runs Frankenburg Technologies, a company developing low-cost anti-drone missiles.

Although NATO countries have a “very good understanding” of how to defend against conventional threats such as missiles and planes, they need to rapidly improve at dealing with drone threats, said Tomas Godliauskas, Lithuania’s vice-minister of national defense.

When the Russian drones flew into Poland, NATO nations deployed fighter jets and attack helicopters and put missile defense systems on alert. But none of those options was specifically designed for drone warfare.

Although Russia and Ukraine have been firing more and more drones at each other, there has been less investment in counter-drone systems, Salm said. He suggested that's partly because it's easier to get a drone to fly than it is to develop something to detect or intercept it.

Slow, low-flying drones made from wood, fiberglass, plastic or polystyrene might not be detected by radar systems searching for a fast-moving missile made of metal, or they might look like birds or a plane. Enemy operatives can also bypass defenses by launching drones from inside a country, as Ukraine did to devastating effect when it attacked Russian airfields this year.

There are also other technological hurdles, including trying to jam the enemy’s drones and communications without cutting your own, Merilo said.

In August, a Ukrainian drone — possibly sent off course by Russian electronic jamming — landed in a field in southeastern Estonia. It crashed because the military wasn't capable of detecting it, Merilo said.

The Estonian military and border force have also lost drones — used for surveillance and to stop illegal border crossings — to Russian jamming, which has also been blamed for disrupting flights.

Other drones have crashed in Romania, Moldova, Lithuania and Latvia, and there have been multiple unidentified drone sightings over military facilities and airports in Europe, including in Germany, the U.K., Norway and Denmark, where air traffic was halted for several hours at Copenhagen Airport on Monday.

The number of incidents shows that Europe needs to solve its drone problem “right now,” said Col. Māris Tūtins, head of information analysis and operations at Latvia’s Joint Forces Headquarters.

There is growing support among European leaders for establishing some sort of drone wall along the EU’s eastern border, though the 27-nation bloc in March denied funding to a joint Estonia-Lithuania proposal to establish one.

The EU needs to prioritize funding for the project, Pevkur said. But although support for the idea is growing, actually creating a drone defense system won't be easy.

“Drones are not mosquitoes,” the Estonian defense minister said, suggesting that they would be unlikely to be zapped by an “electronic wall” along NATO’s borders.

There are many types of drones, including those used for intelligence and reconnaissance, that fly at high altitude, that are used in attacks or that even remain attached to a thin fiber-optic cable while flying, making them impossible to jam. Russia also uses decoy drones in Ukraine that carry no payload and are designed to exhaust air defenses.

Any plan to defend against drones needs a multilayered approach, including sensors, “electronic warfare … also low-cost small missiles or attack drones,” Merilo said.

Although the need for better drone defenses isn't new, it’s still largely only possible to buy systems that are “really expensive,” take a long time to develop and can't be mass-produced, Merilo said.

He suggested that’s partly because big defense companies that have spent decades developing billion-dollar air defense systems might not want something new — and cheaper — on the market.

“We have to understand this game,” Merilo said, adding that some technology does exist, but “the question is who — and how fast they can start producing.”

Facing nightly onslaughts, Ukraine is rapidly developing its own technology, including long-range attack drones and smaller ones for use on the front lines.

While big defense companies play a critical role in the defense of Europe, Latvia and some other NATO countries have turned to smaller companies — such as Salm's Frankenburg — to acquire its small anti-drone missiles once they're in production.

But a piecemeal approach isn't ideal, Salm said. Instead, the EU needs to invest more in European startups, which can turbocharge drone defense production that can be used by allies across different weapons systems, he said.

Europe needs to switch to “semi-wartime thinking” and foster greater collaboration between the military, government and defense industries to be able to fill its technology gap, Godliauskas said.

In Ukraine, it's sometimes only a matter of weeks between drone technology being developed and used on the battlefield. Europe “doesn't have time” to spend years waiting to acquire equipment, the Lithuanian official said.

Another lesson from Ukraine is that what works today, might not work tomorrow, Godliauskas said.

While drone defense is critical now, it would be wrong to forget about everything else, Tūtins said. That's because Moscow is using “all means possible” to destabilize Europe, including hybrid warfare and cyberattacks, he said.

Posts mark the border between Estonia, left, and Russia, right, near Vinski, Estonia, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Hendrik Osula)

A border fence between Estonia and Russia is seen near Vinski, Estonia, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Hendrik Osula)

An Estonian border guard patrols the Russian border near Vinski, Estonia, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Hendrik Osula)

FILE - Territorial defense officers clear debris from a house near Lublin, Poland, after Russian drones violated Polish airspace Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File)

A drone shows an aerial view of the Estonia-Russia border near Vinski, Estonia, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Hendrik Osula)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s second term has been eventful. You wouldn’t know it from his approval numbers.

An AP-NORC poll from January found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Trump’s performance as president. That’s virtually unchanged from March 2025, shortly after he took office for the second time.

The new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research does show subtle signs of vulnerability for the Republican president. Trump hasn’t convinced Americans that the economy is in good shape, and many question whether he has the right priorities when he’s increasingly focused on foreign intervention. His approval rating on immigration, one of his signature issues, has also slipped since he took office.

Here’s how Americans’ views of Trump have — and haven’t — changed over the past year, according to AP-NORC polling.

Call it a gift or a curse — for all his unpredictability, Trump's approval numbers just don't change very much.

This was largely the case during his first term in office, too. Early in his first term, 42% of Americans approved of how he was handling the presidency. There were some ups and downs over the ensuing years, but he left office with almost the same approval.

That level of consistency on presidential approval numbers could be the new normal for U.S. politics — or it could be unique to Trump. Gallup polling since the 1950s shows that presidential approval ratings have grown less variable over time. But President Joe Biden had a slightly different experience. Biden, a Democrat, entered the White House with higher approval numbers than Trump has ever received, but those fell rapidly during his first two years in office, then stayed low for the remainder of his term.

Most Americans have held a critical view of Trump throughout his time in office, and Americans are twice as likely to say he's focused on the wrong priorities than the right ones. About half of U.S. adults say he’s mostly focusing on the wrong priorities one year into his second term, and approximately 2 in 10 say he’s mostly focused on the right priorities. Another 2 in 10, roughly, say it’s been about an even mix, and 14% say they don't have an opinion.

The economy has haunted Trump in his first year back in the White House, despite his insistence that “the Trump economic boom has officially begun.”

Just 37% of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the economy. That’s up slightly from 31% in December — which marked a low point for Trump — but Trump started out with low approval on this issue, which doesn’t give him a lot of room for error.

The economy is a new problem for Trump. His approval rating on this issue in his first term fluctuated, but it was typically higher. Close to half of Americans approved of Trump’s economic approach for much of his first White House stint, and he’s struggled to adjust to this as a weak point. Americans care a lot more about costs than they did in Trump’s first term, and, like Biden, he’s persistently asserted that the U.S. economy is not a problem while the vast majority describe it as “poor.”

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say Trump has done more to hurt the cost of living in his second term, while only about 2 in 10 say he’s done more to help. About one-quarter say he hasn't made an impact.

When Trump entered office, immigration was among his strongest issues. It’s since faded, a troubling sign for Trump, who campaigned on both economic prosperity and crackdowns to illegal immigration.

Just 38% of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling immigration, down from 49% in March. The poll was conducted Jan. 8-11, shortly after the death of Renee Good, who was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.

But there are signs that Americans still give Trump some leeway on immigration issues. About half of U.S. adults say Trump has “gone too far” when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the country illegally, which is unchanged since April, despite an immigration crackdown that spread to cities across the U.S. in the second half of the year.

Nearly half of Americans, 45%, say Trump has helped immigration and border security “a lot” or “a little” in his second term. This is an area where Democrats are more willing to give Trump some credit. About 2 in 10 Democrats say Trump has helped on this issue, higher than the share of Democrats who say he's helped on costs or job creation.

Trump has focused his attention more on foreign policy in his second term, and polling shows most Americans disapprove of his approach.

But much like Trump's overall approval, views of his handling of foreign policy have changed little in his second term, despite wide-ranging actions including his push to control Greenland and the recent military capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

About 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the issue of foreign policy, and most Americans, 56%, say Trump has “gone too far” in using the U.S. military to intervene in other countries.

Trump’s continued focus on global issues could be a liability given its sharp contrast with the “America First” platform he ran on and Americans’ growing concern with costs at home. But it could also be hard to shift views on the issue — even if Trump takes more dramatic action in the coming months.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,203 adults was conducted Jan. 8-11 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

President Donald Trump holds a bill that returns whole milk to school cafeterias across the country, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)