Ukraine pledges to bolster Polish drone defence with training

According to the defense ministers of the nations, Ukraine has agreed to provide training for Polish soldiers and engineers in drone defense.

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz stated at a press conference in Kyiv that Poland would sign a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and that the training would take place in Lipa, a small town in southern Poland, on Thursday.

As Kosiniak-Kamysz sat next to him, Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal said, “We are talking about training engineers and soldiers who will stand up to and defend the air domain.”

This is only the tip of what allows us to defend our sky together, Shmyhal continued. “We are not only talking about interceptor drones.”

More than 20 drones were shot down by Polish and NATO forces in violation of Ukrainian airspace during a Russian airstrike on neighboring Ukraine a week prior to the announcement.

To defeat those drones, fighter jets launched missiles, which is much more expensive than Russia’s purchase of and production of cheap, mass-produced drones.

Russia claimed that its forces were attacking Ukraine at the time of the drone strike and that they had no intention of hitting Polish targets.

Ukraine claims to be the only country in the world that can safely defend itself from large-scale Russian drone attacks using a multilayered system of interceptor drones, heavy machineguns, and electronic warfare.

Poland can see what might be heading its way because Ukraine, according to Shmyhal, will also grant access to some of its surveillance systems for Russian aerial targets.

Polish forces would have to learn the “ecosystem” of how to intercept unmanned enemy aerial vehicles, from tracking them to jamming them with interceptor drones, he said.