It’s early morning at the sprawling 32nd Tactical airbase in Łask, a couple of hours outside the Polish capital of Warsaw, and the late autumn wind is sharp. Nearby, a crew of Australians are wrapping up the deployment of an E-7 Wedgetail surveillance plane, sent to the country to help Nato’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“You’ll feel it here,” our chaperone says, tapping his chest as a cluster of F16 fighter planes prepare to take off. Their roar reverberates through the atmosphere, each charging into the low-hanging clouds.
Vladimir Putin’s war has upended security and defence across the continent and, as the European Union and Nato dig in for a fourth year of fighting, senior officials have a message for countries around the globe. Almost everyone who spoke to Guardian Australia during a recent visit agrees: war in Europe has made conflict in the Indo-Pacific more likely – and countries including Australia need to be better prepared.
Lt Col Grzegorz Langowski is in charge of the base at Łask. He worked with the Australians sent to fly the air force’s Wedgetail, which is packed with top-secret systems. It reportedly undertook some 45 missions, including over major supply routes into Ukraine, and was at work when Russian planes crossed into Estonian airspace earlier this year.
The onslaught of drone attacks directed by Moscow has countries across the EU on edge.
“Australia was the first non-Nato country to come here,” Langowski said. “It was very important for us to cooperate, to practise those tactics, those techniques and procedures, so we could work together as widely.
“But the world is interconnected and strategy is important. It includes Poland and the Ukrainian war, but it affects China as well and Australia over there.”
A road covered with an anti-drone netting near Izum in the Kharkhiv region of Ukraine. Photograph: Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Reuters
Langowski says he would welcome more deployments of the Wedgetail and other assets from Australia, even as tentative peace negotiations led by the US president, Donald Trump, continue. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has pushed back strongly against White House pressure to submit to unfavourable terms and fundamental territorial questions and security protection for Ukraine are yet to be settled.
The EU is working on plans for a “drone wall” defence system, something the 27-country bloc wants to stem growing incursions. Russia has persistently targeted Ukrainian regions using drones and missiles to take out energy and port infrastructure.
Andrius Kubilius, the former Lithuanian prime minister turned EU defence chief, says member states have been too slow to recognise the threat posed by drone warfare. Kubilius, who will help guide a new defence and security partnership between the EU and the Albanese government, has urged countries – including Australia – to rapidly scale up capability.
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“It’s very important for us to understand that what we now call provocations with drones can be a new type of warfare,” he says.
“You don’t need always to send tanks or artillery through the border to occupy territory. But you can really terrorise neighbouring countries or countries further away with drones, disturbing strategic infrastructure and how it can operate or not operate.”
Drones are also being used in what Europe considers a war of hybrid threats, including targeting of civilian infrastructure and borders well beyond the battlefield, including in Germany, Denmark and Norway.
“The lesson from Ukraine is very simple,” Kubilius says in his office in the EU administrative zone in Brussels. “We need to learn not only how to build a drone, how to produce [a] drone, but also how to create a whole ecosystem.
“Each two months, the drones being used are becoming obsolete. Your adversary, your enemy is finding ways to destroy or intercept or jam your drones so quickly, it’s a permanent development process.”
A Ghost Bat drone pictured during a demonstration in Woomera, South Australia. Photograph: Tess Ikonomou/AAP
Australia is already upping capability. The government expects to spend at least $10bn on drone systems in the next 10 years and recently announced a $1bn purchase agreement for six Ghost Bat drones, which have a range of more than 3,700km.
When Nato scrambled fighter jets to deal with Russian drones over Poland in September, it fell to Lt Gen Maciej Klisz, the operational commander of the Polish Armed Forces, to respond. It was the first time since the second world war that Polish troops have mobilised against a threat to their homeland.
Klisz met with Vice-Admiral Justin Jones, his defence force equivalent from Australia, the same week.
“What we both agreed is they have the same playbook,” Klisz says. “Russia is not the only source of negative things in the world. While close for us is Moscow, we see it in a much broader context and you cannot avoid naming China.”
While Russia tests Nato’s collective defence clause, known as article five, through a diverse range of tactics, Klisz says the weaponisation of maritime routes and targeting of strategic assets could be replicated by other countries, including in the Indo-Pacific. Defence officials in Australia last month tracked a Chinese flotilla which was headed towards Australia, less than a year after a naval task group sparked alarm when it unexpectedly circumnavigated the country. It has since left the region but the federal government expects more attention from Beijing.
Poland could join the massive Talisman Sabre military exercise in Australia, designed to test and improve combat readiness and interoperability with overseas forces, including the United States. Both countries are also part of the F35 stealth fighter jet network of countries. Some of the planes, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, are due at Łask early this year.
Klisz welcomes Australia’s involvement in the coalition of the willing, countries pledging support for Ukraine during and after the war.
“This cooperation between Poland and Australia, even though we are far away by geography, is growing stronger,” he says.
China’s involvement in the war, along with North Korea and Iran, is concerning European leaders. Robert Kupiecki, Poland’s undersecretary of state and security adviser to the country’s prime minister, says international security is so closely connected that EU members should foster strong ties with Australia.
“If something bad is to happen in your part of the world, involving our American allies, it will have a direct effect on us. All the more because China and Russia cooperate strategically,” he says.
“The international analysis and the number of scenarios of possible conflicts, parallel conflicts in Europe and in the Pacific Ocean, are great.”
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has told Guardian Australia Russia and its partners should take note of the international resolve against the invasion in Ukraine. Like in Europe, pushing back, including to uphold the United Nations charter, is critical to Australian foreign policy.
Penny Wong, right, with Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs, Andriy Sybiga, in Kyiv last year. Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
“We want a region where sovereignty is respected, where no one country dominates and no country is dominated,” Wong says. “That sort of strategic balance … is the best context for Australia to remain who we are and true to what we want.”
Individual EU countries are at work already, including through a range of Indo-Pacific focused strategies.
Marc Abensour, a career diplomat, leads France’s Indo-Pacific engagement. On the wall of his office in Paris, a huge map shows his remit, stretching from eastern Africa to French Polynesia.
“We are fully committed to rule based order and that’s something I think shared with the vast majority of partners in the Indo-Pacific, who are actually trying to navigate between these competition among strategic players,” he says.
“What France, and I would say the EU, is providing, is precisely how to avoid this division of the world into spheres of influence and some great player exerting influence and pressure.”
Abensour says managing tensions and avoiding conflict should be a key goal, including around Taiwan and the Korean peninsula. France’s explicit rejection of “spheres of influence” foreshadows a possible split with Trump, whose administration has cited protection of the Western hemisphere as part of its move to arrest Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a special forces operation this week.
“After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have all been confronted by increased strategic disinhibition,” Abensour says. “That has a global impact and it is not limited to the European theatre.”
