When a drone appears over a military site or critical civilian infrastructure, if identified as hostile, the drone is tracked, engaged, and brought down. But what happens next? EDA tested how military specialists work together to deal with what comes next.
Intercepting or downing a drone does not necessarily remove the danger. The explosive device might still be active after the drone is neutralised. Or they might contain dangerous chemical and/or radioactive substances that spill around the device.
The European Vigilant Shield tabletop exercise at the Santa Margarida military camp focused on how specialists coordinate during a drone incident, including the actions to be taken after the aircraft has been brought down. The exercise gathered feedback from those responding to drone threats to assess and improve the procedures used to protect military sites and critical infrastructure.
Practising the response
Participants worked through increasingly complex scenarios to test how specialists coordinate their response: assessing threats, making devices safe and handling hazardous materials. They also examined how to safely recover and analyse components, preserving evidence that could help establish who was responsible for an incident.
The exercise aimed to assess how existing counter-drone procedures protect military assets and critical infrastructure, and identify where changes are needed. Its findings will inform a review of operational techniques, procedures and military doctrine, covering both the immediate response to a drone threat and the actions required after it has been neutralised.
Experts across several fields took part, combining knowledge of counter-drone operations, command and control, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence, explosive ordnance disposal, technical exploitation and military legal affairs. National experts worked alongside representatives from the United Nations Mine Action Service, NATO’s Counter-Improvised Explosive Devices Centre of Excellence, the NATO Joint CBRN Defence Capability Development Group and the Joint CBRN Defence Centre of Excellence.
Starting point
The next phase, virtual wargaming in 2027, will introduce more complex scenarios and test decisions involving several teams. Live experimentation in 2028 is planned to test the full response under field conditions, from countering a drone to specialist intervention and analysis of recovered material.
The exercise demonstrated that defeating the drone is often only the beginning of the response. Defence forces must be prepared to investigate, render safe, exploit and learn from every incident. They must integrate expertise from multiple disciplines, coordinate across organisational boundaries and transform technical findings into operational advantage.
European Vigilant Shield contributes to the wider Defence Readiness 2030 agenda by turning operational challenges into concrete priorities for capability development, experimentation and cooperation. It also demonstrates the role of a EDA in bringing Member States and specialist communities together, testing responses to concrete problems and helping translate lessons into deployable capabilities.