IISS Report: Russia 'Highly Likely' Used Shadow Fleet to Launch Drone Operations Against Europe

IISS Report: Russia 'Highly Likely' Used Shadow Fleet to Launch Drone Operations Against Europe

Researchers Charlie Edwards, Rex Fox O'Loughlin, and Louis Bearn of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) have jointly published a new report concluding that Russia very likely carried out an organised drone campaign against Europe — one almost certainly enabled by shadow fleet vessels operating in international waters. The report warns of a serious gap between Europe's current defensive capabilities and the actual threat it faces.

Scale and Impact of the Drone Campaign

The report states: "Between August 2024 and February 2026, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flew in the airspace of more than ten NATO member states and Ireland, repeatedly forcing the closure of major commercial aviation hubs, disrupting military operations, and penetrating some of Europe's most sensitive defence facilities."

While the authors acknowledge that not every sighting can be attributed to Kremlin direction — and that not every reported incident necessarily involved a drone — they stress that the overall pattern of sightings cannot be explained away by misidentification, hobbyist activity, or opportunistic harassment alone.

The Kremlin's Strategic Calculus

According to the report, the Kremlin succeeded by exploiting a fundamental strategic insight: "Europe's air-defence architecture was designed to detect and defeat conventional aerial threats operating on an identifiable battlefield — not relatively low-cost drones deployed in deniable incursions designed to expose gaps in detection, decision-making, and legal authorisation, while remaining below the threshold that would trigger a collective Allied response."

Structural Blind Spots in European Air Defence

The report finds that Europe's response to the drone campaign "was constrained from the outset by detection problems that pre-dated the Kremlin's operations by decades."

The authors identify several critical vulnerabilities:

• Low-altitude flight: Drones flew at low altitudes at night without broadcasting identification or position data.
• Maritime launch: Drones were launched from vessels in international waters rather than crossing land borders.
• Radar gaps: Ground-based radar could not reliably track the drones; airborne surveillance assets struggled to distinguish them from background clutter.
• Civil aviation system limitations: Civil aviation systems are built around cooperative users and have no mechanism to detect drones that deliberately avoid broadcasting their position.

The authors note that European regulators have been aware of these shortcomings for years, and emphasise that adequate defence requires not only procuring counter-drone systems but integrating them under a unified command-and-control framework.

The European Drone Defence Initiative (EDDI) and Its Limitations

The proposed European Drone Defence Initiative (EDDI), expected to reach full operational capability by end-2027, has already exposed funding disagreements among member states. Notably, current EDDI proposals do not address the threat of drones launched from within European territory or from nearby offshore waters.

The Shadow Fleet: A Key Enabler

One of the report's most significant findings concerns the role of the shadow fleet. Shadow fleet vessels evade tracking by concealing true ownership, origin, and destination — commonly by switching off Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders or manipulating GPS data.

Data presented in the report reveals a correlation between shadow fleet activity and unauthorised drone sightings. The authors note that "there is a reasonable possibility that Russia-linked vessels and/or shadow fleet tankers approached operational areas, switched off their AIS transponders during drone launch and recovery, and then resumed normal signal transmission afterwards."

Three Core Challenges

The report concludes by identifying three fundamental problems undermining Europe's drone defence:

1. Fragmented rules of engagement: As long as rules of engagement remain fragmented across national jurisdictions, the Kremlin will continue to exploit the gaps. No amount of hardware can compensate for the absence of political authorisation to use it.

2. Unfavourable cost-exchange ratio: Until the cost-exchange ratio is reversed, European governments risk relying on expensive, limited countermeasures. EDDI may help address this over time, but will take years to become effective.

3. Absence of maritime accountability: As long as Russia-linked vessels and shadow fleet ships can loiter in international waters or European exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and launch drones with near impunity, the primary enabling mechanism of the campaign remains intact.

In June 2026, Royal Marines commandos boarded a sanctioned shadow fleet tanker in the English Channel, supported by two Royal Navy vessels and Maritime Aviation Group helicopters. (Image: Royal Navy)

The full report is available for download in PDF format on the IISS website.

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