Key Points and Summary – Russia’s mass strike on Ukraine spilled into NATO airspace when 19 drones crossed from Belarus into Poland, forcing intercepts and an Article 4 consultation.
-Warsaw, backed by allied F-35s, ISR and German Patriot units, downed multiple drones but stopped short of triggering Article 5.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. John Ryan, 555th Fighter Squadron F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot, prepares to take off for a routine training flight at Aviano Air Base, Feb. 17, 2022. The flights will support NATO’s enhanced air policing mission; integrate with allies and partners in the Black Sea region in an increased defensive posture along NATO’s border and to reinforce regional security. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Brooke Moeder)
-Analysts see a deliberate probe of integrated air defenses, a salami-slice test of resolve, and exploitation of ambiguity via Belarus.
-The real danger is escalation by accident—debris casualties, mistaken identity, or a panicked shot. The prudent course is firm interceptions, redlines and layered air defense, paired with restraint to deter further tests without stumbling into war.
Russia and NATO: War Coming Soon?
In the early hours of September 10, 2025, nineteen Russian military drones violated Polish airspace before being downed. Airports in Warsaw, Rzeszów, Lublin, and Modlin were closed, and parts of a downed drone struck a residential building in the Lublin region.
Nobody was injured, but the incursion forced NATO for the first time into direct kinetic confrontation with Russia. The direct political effect of the violation of Poland’s airspace was that it provoked Warsaw to invoke Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which allows any member to request consultation if its territorial integrity or security is threatened.
The proposition that such an incursion was inadvertent is dubious at best. The mass, precision, and coordination of the event, synchronized with Russia’s heaviest missile-and-drone barrage against Ukraine to date, strongly suggest a provocative and intentional salvo. The German defense minister has stated that the drones appeared to be deliberately programmed for entry into Polish territory, rather than drifting off course by accident.
Probing Mission
If intentional, there are several reasons why. First, the violation could have been a calculated effort to probe Polish and allied air-defense systems. These networks have only recently been upgraded and integrated with NATO systems, and Moscow has a long history of probing military capabilities, from buzzing allied ships in the Baltic Sea to testing radar coverage in the High North. Such incursions are not random acts of bravado but rather choreographed opportunities to test Western resolve and response.
Second, the incursion could be part of a salami-slice strategy: incremental transgressions designed to gradually weaken alliance resolve without provoking Article 5. Each individual incursion may not reach the threshold of collective defense, yet cumulatively they erode political will and patience within Western publics. Russia benefits either way—either it risks escalation from NATO by responding forcefully or risks empowering Moscow by being seen to capitulate.
An AH-64 “Apache” attack helicopter assigned to 1st Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment, flies overhead during Training Exercise Hydra on Utah Test and Training Range, Utah, May 7, 2025. Exercise Hydra is a Utah National Guard-led, joint, multi-domain combat training exercise designed to simulate real-world operations across air, land, and cyber domains. The exercise brings together the 151st Wing (KC-135), 419th Fighter Wing (F-35), 19th Special Forces Group, 65th Field Artillery Brigade, and multiple Army and Air Force elements to test joint targeting, rapid insertion, battlefield communication, and dynamic problem-solving.
(Utah Army National Guard photo taken by Spc. Dustin B. Smith)
Third, the use of Belarus as a staging area for the drones would provide the Kremlin with plausible deniability. Hybrid conflict has demonstrated that ambiguity is itself a weapon. If such incidents can be explained away as accidents or the actions of proxies, Moscow can avoid full accountability while sowing discord within NATO.
Drone Fallout
The political repercussions were swift. Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that Poland now found itself nearer to an open shooting war than at any point since World War II. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte described the actions as reckless.
Polish fighters, with support from Dutch F-35s as well as allied Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), and tanker aircraft, shot down several of the drones. German Patriot batteries based in Poland were credited for detection and scrambled to a higher level of readiness. This invasion was the first time NATO forces had engaged to defend allied airspace since the current war in Ukraine.
Crucially, the alliance did not invoke Article 5, the clause that treats an attack on one NATO member as an attack on all. Poland instead invoked Article 4, which allows any member to request consultation if its territorial integrity or security is threatened.
The difference is significant. Article 4 is a signal of distress and a call for allied consultation. Still, it does not automatically commit NATO to collective retaliation. By containing the issue to Article 4, Warsaw and its allies preserved room to maneuver. They avoided placing the alliance on an escalatory course.
The decision to hold back from invoking Article 5 is the core of what must be a US-led NATO policy of restraint: reacting firmly enough to deter further aggression, but not to the point of committing the alliance to war.
hat U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Alexander Trott, a paratrooper with 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, fires his MK22 Advanced Sniper Rifle during sniper training at the 7th Army Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, June 7, 2024. A 1-91 CAV sniper team will participate at the International Danish Sniper Competition later this month. The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the U.S. Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, providing rapidly deployable forces to the United States European, African, and Central Command areas of responsibility. Forward deployed across Italy and Germany, the brigade routinely trains alongside NATO allies and partners to build partnerships and strengthen the alliance. (U.S. Army photo by Markus Rauchenberger)
The worst-case scenario isn’t a cold, calculated Russian decision to lash out at the West, but rather a loss of control or an accident. A kinetic incursion that kills civilians because of a stray hunk of shrapnel, a mistaken identity case in the middle of a frenetic scramble, or a panicked overreaction from an overstressed pilot could set off an escalatory chain reaction that no one wants or expects. The entire eastern flank is now an escalation-saturated environment; every radar track, every scramble is a disaster waiting to happen.
Restraint in this case is not a sign of weakness but of strategic discipline. By decisively intercepting incursions and maintaining control over the political temperature, NATO preserves its command of the escalation ladder. The alternative is a reactive cycle in which every provocation generates a larger counter-provocation, leading to a confrontation no one desires.
Yes, the Poland Incident Could Mean a NATO-Russia War Is Possible
The 9 September events demonstrate two interlocking realities. First, the prospect of a NATO–Russia war is no longer an abstraction. Moscow has shown a willingness to test NATO directly. Second, the most likely path to such a conflict is not through deliberate escalation but through miscalculation. The means to a wider war exist; the question is which one. Technical failure, human error, or political panic could cause escalation to spiral in a single instant.
The case of Poland proves that Europe is already in a new, more dangerous phase of geopolitical instability. Russian actions may be the result of calculated probing, salami-slicing, or adventuristic opportunism shrouded in plausible deniability. They may be choreographed or they may be improvised.
In either case, however, the escalatory ladder is being ascended. Clarity of purpose, unity of response, and the discipline of restraint will be required to ensure that the climb does not become a stampede to open conflict.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a Senior Washington Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities, and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham. He writes a daily column for National Security Journal.
More Military
The Navy’s Big Super Tomcat 21 Fighter Mistake Still Stings
YF-23 Black Widow II: Aircraft Carrier Fighter?
A New B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber Is in the Sky
Jim
September 10, 2025 at 4:52 pm
I look forward to physical evidence as reports claim downed drones.
Full transparency is warranted as the stakes are as high as they can be.
There are conflicting reports amid the fog of war and it’s crucial the best evidence currently available is presented in an open and public process.
We cannot have false narratives used for the purposes of spurring the European Continent to General Warfare.
Presently, many voices seem bent on using this incident as a casus belli for war.
As expressed in increased pressure not to settle on a realistic and reasonable peace treaty of neutrality for Ukraine.
That’s it: a peace treaty of neutrality for Ukraine.
Political Forces exist which will never accept neutrality for Ukraine.
They’d have General European War rather than a peaceful continent focused on the Welfare of the average citizen.
The War Game is played by elites, everybody knows that.
Do we let the elite take us to war?
They are wrong, but sadly, they are given a voice in Western media and political circles.
Again, full transparency of the facts as best can be known is of the order of the day…
… how much closer to the edge of the abyss do you want to get?
I think they want to go over the edge wearing bungee cords.
The real World doesn’t work like that. Think about it.
Bankotsu
September 11, 2025 at 2:08 am
U.S. must declare war on Russia for the attack on Poland.
Swamplaw Yankee
September 11, 2025 at 6:14 am
Wow: The master of F-35 PR for Canada – but zero F-35 air frames for Mexico- has droned back into Poland. Maybe Mexico can still beg its way into buying 200-300 f-35’s. Yes, of course, to donate most of them to Iceland, Ireland and Greenland.
Let’s see: the escalation ladder. Is it being applied to other states?
Clarity or Purpose; Unity of response: what the heck? More PR?
Where is the original “DOLUS SPECIALIS” of the tsarling Puti the pedo? The LONG GAME of tsarling Puti the Pedo seems long gone from any keyboarding with this op-ed fountain. Real “discipline of restraint” when the most relevant data is never mentioned!
In 2014 POTUS Obama, his Democrat Cabal, unilaterally green lit the re-start of the ancient 1000 year old genetic inherited genocidal intent of the russkie ethnic to butcher Ukrainians!
That is your “DOLUS SPECIALIS” genocidal intent that the op-ed sanitizes. You might think we were reviewing GAZA or HARARA humans.
The keyboard fights the author so viciously as the keys refuse to document the greatest Genocide of the last 100 years, the HOLODOMOR where russkie Putin’s grandfather, wearing his Stalin Halloween costume, butchered in 1932-33 20,000,000 Ukrainians!!
Poor author, those keys of his refuse to mention Katyn as well.
In 2025, wearing his FSB Halloween costume, Putin is demanding that MAGA POTUS Trumpkins shut his big mouth as Putin keeps the line of Genocide and FREE real estate moving thru unlimited family homes of Ukraine.
Yes, in 1932-33 FREE real estate for parasite russkies opened up in suddenly vacant, empty homes as 20,000,000 Ukrainians vanished, poof, gone because they all forgot how to eat. Well, not true, sometimes the russkie parasite invaders had to carry out the dead starved parents and send the kiddies out to Siberia.
Now, the grandchildren of the invaders spent the money on “Lolita” packages and vodka and demand that Puti again give them FREE unlimited real estate in 2025, but with no pesky Ukrainian bodies inside.
FREE Ukrainian real estate, FREE “Lolita” packages air shipped to any Moscow address, why should any deviant muscovite pedophile not love and adore Puti the Pedo of 2025. Loving Puti is just, so well, NORMAL.
As we peer reviewers attempt to disambiguate causal order in Ukraine, the Polish reader needs to be alarmed. That only 4 out of 24 drones were stopped means what? That all those expensive air frames did nothing but blow millions of dollars of flying expense. So, $5,000 plus US dollar cost decoy drones take a few million dollars of spy film for Puti, and the big expensive NATO air frames waste millions on their air time emergency sight seeing.
Puti has the data, the warning has been issued to Poland/NATO and the missiles/drones will be re-stocked facilitated by the PRC CCP Xi regime.
The op-ed refers to salami-slicing. Salami-slicing? Somehow the author always forgets to document the POW slicing that the “NORMAL” orc russkie ethnic NAZI-like FSB inflict on Ukrainian men/women civilians and POW’s. Even the real NAZI Germans did not slice off Genitals, gouge out eyes or remove organs of captured reporters and soldiers.
One has to notice Komrade zzhhimmm and his much keyboarded inner genetic need for physical evidence. Now fellas, Show him the human evidence, pleasssse! Those women bodies with organs removed, will do for a start, then, next the genitals. Oh, ZZhhimmm, that make your inner self happy, enjoying the physical human evidence.
Otherwise, Ukraine has to be conquered by the most deranged ethnic group in Eurasia, you know, the fake code word, for PEACE. Promptly denied agency and be made neutral to keep the Komrades entranced.
There are many more than two interlocking realities. In quantum theory the debate about reality, probability, location, etc., are now a century old. That is, the debate started years before before russkie Putin’s grandfather got a glean in his orc eye about FREE Ukrainian real estate being free after you kill off those pesky Ukrainian owners.
Now, we understand the Qbism interlocking reality. It is the agent’s understanding of the Ukrainian world that they exist in. If the agent is Ukrainian your measurement problem in Ukraine in more probable. The theorist still has to make a bet on what is reality, but with the Qbism interpretation the bet result is more apt to materialize.
The parasite russkie ethnic orcs bet that they could genocide Ukrainians with no resistance as back in 1932-33. The genocidal intent inside of the russkie parasites rages genetically on. The question is, why does the MAGA POTUS Trump + his elite so voluntarily “entangle” themselves in this ancient 1000 year old russkie genetic need to kill/butcher Ukrainians? -30-
Pingback: Der Weg zu einem NATO-Russland-Krieg - Kritik Bakış