OPINION: Why Warsaw is right to shoot down what comes from Russia on the radar’s word

Forty-two seconds

Braniewo, at 11:08

A Russian military helicopter spent 42 seconds in Polish skies on September 23, north of Braniewo, and nobody fired.

An Mi-8, out of the Kaliningrad enclave. About 300 metres inside the border, according to the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces.

The radar saw it. It tracked it. It measured it: 300 metres deep. It timed it: 11:08 a.m. And it let it go.

Fighter jets took off. On the ground, the batteries were ready.

Then it flew back. The rule in force said: see it first.

What fits in forty-two seconds

Forty-two seconds is the time it takes to lace a pair of boots. To hear the kettle whistle. To dig your keys out of the bottom of a pocket.

For a fighter pilot, it is often too short to reach an intruder, see it with his own eyes, and ask for permission to fire.

The Operational Command put it bluntly: the nature of the incident shows that Russia is testing, once again, the readiness of Polish air defence.

Forty-two seconds, and the test is passed.

The rule of September 28

Dęblin, a Monday morning

On September 28, in Dęblin, Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk announced the response.

He had come to the Military Aviation Works for a contract to service helicopter engines. He left with a rule of engagement.

In the coming days, he said, according to RMF24, the ministry will change the firing rules for Polish aircraft and helicopters facing objects that arrive from the direction of Russia.

Until now, in peacetime, a pilot had to get close enough to identify the target by eye. From now on, so-called positive identification will be enough.

Positive identification, RMF24 explains, means recognizing a detected object as a specific target, hostile or in violation of the airspace, without the pilot having to see it with his own eyes.

A few days. Not a few months.

Radar instead of the eye

For the pilot or the operations commander, a radar reading will be enough to decide to fire, RMF24 reports.

The decision comes from the operational commander of the armed forces, Major General Ireneusz Nowak, and draws on recent weeks and on the war in Ukraine.

Tomczyk made no secret of it. These options, he said, were usually reserved for a state of war or martial law. Poland faces the possibility of drones entering its territory every day.

Peacetime just lost one of its habits.

See first, then fire

One or two kilometres

The old rule had a logic. See before you fire. Don’t shoot down a lost airliner, a friendly aircraft, a balloon.

It forced the fighter to close within one or two kilometres of its target, explains the Polish expert Piotr Abraszek, quoted by Defense Magazine.

Under the new rule, a medium-range missile can be launched from several dozen kilometres away.

Seeing costs time. Seeing costs fuel. Seeing costs ground.

The old rule protected the innocent. It also protected the intruder.

The drone that doesn’t slow down

Against a slow target, seeing is possible. Against a jet-powered drone or a cruise missile, there is often no time, the magazine writes.

Forty-two seconds, and nobody fired.

I will say it up front: Warsaw is right. I stand with the Poles and the Ukrainians along the border, who live under this sky. Against the Russian flights that probe it. Because on September 23, an Mi-8 spent 42 seconds over a NATO ally, and yesterday’s rule let it fly home.

Seeing first was a courtesy. The sky no longer extends it.

A crater at Tarnawa-Kolonia

The night of July 29 to 30

The heaviest evidence isn’t the Mi-8. It lies in a field.

On the night of July 29 to 30, 2026, a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile struck a field near Tarnawa-Kolonia, about a hundred kilometres from the border, Defense Magazine reports.

It was not shot down. It left a crater.

No warning in time

And the local population received no alert in time, the magazine adds.

A hundred kilometres inside a NATO country. A missile built to strike far away. No interception. No siren in time.

A field. This time.

And that missile had precedents. In December 2023 and March 2024, Russian cruise missiles had already crossed briefly into Polish airspace. The second time, for 39 seconds, near Oserdów, according to Defense Magazine.

In the countryside, people know what turned earth looks like after a storm. They should not have to learn what it looks like after a missile.

A crater in a field is a warning that got lucky.

Iahodyn, two kilometres away

September 28, in the afternoon

The very day Tomczyk spoke, a Russian drone struck near the Iahodyn border crossing, in Volyn.

Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz placed the impact on Ukrainian territory, about 2 kilometres from the Dorohusk crossing, with no violation of Polish airspace, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Sources in Ukraine’s border guard service spoke of a few hundred metres from the border.

September 13 and 17

It was not a first. On September 17, a Russian drone came down near a gas station in Iahodyn.

On September 13, a Russian drone hit a truck about 800 metres from the Polish border, near the same crossing. The same day, Russian forces struck the locomotive of a passenger train bound for Warsaw.

Our systems and our aircraft were ready, Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote. Ready, yes. And yet still bound to see before firing.

A truck. A train. A gas station. The daily life of a border crossing, turned into a target.

Eight hundred metres is a border you can cross on foot.

Ten minutes over Tulcea

Statement number 200

Romania had lived through a similar evening the day before.

On the evening of September 27, the Romanian Defence Ministry’s radar detected an air target north of Chilia Veche, on Ukrainian territory, near the border.

Two Romanian F-16s on air policing duty took off from Borcea air base. An RO-Alert message went out at 8:35 p.m. in Tulcea County.

A signal that vanished

According to the radar data, the target entered Romanian airspace over the Ceatalchioi area, followed the border, and then its signal disappeared after about 10 minutes, near Somova.

The alert ended at 10:05 p.m. An hour and a half. A phone buzzing in the pockets of an entire county.

A team was to search the area the next day.

The statement does not say what the target was. It does not say where it came from. It mentions no shots fired.

Ten minutes in a NATO sky. And a name nobody knows.

Ten minutes without a name is ten minutes too many.

A test, says the command

What Warsaw has already lived through

The word “test” isn’t mine. It belongs to the Polish Operational Command.

On the morning of September 16, Poland scrambled its fighters and suspended flights at the Lublin and Rzeszów-Jasionka airports during Russian strikes on Ukraine, the Kyiv Independent reports.

Around 7 a.m., aircraft in the air, ground-based air defence and radars on alert. Shortly after 8 a.m., the operation ended. An hour of closed sky.

September 2025, seven hours

A year earlier, on the night of September 9 to 10, 2025, at least 19 Russian drones, and up to 23 by other estimates, had entered Polish airspace, according to Defense Magazine. Seven hours of incident. Airports closed in Warsaw, Modlin, Rzeszów and Lublin.

Moscow and Minsk spoke of drones led astray by jamming.

A helicopter that passes through. A missile that falls. Drones that stray.

Each incident, taken alone, has an explanation. Laid end to end, they sketch a method.

A test doesn’t need to succeed every time. It needs a slow response.

You keep testing a door as long as it won’t shut.

Przewodów, November 2022

Two dead

Now the strongest case against me has to be written, and it has the name of a village.

In November 2022, a missile fell near Przewodów and two civilians died. The investigation showed it was a Ukrainian S-300 air defence missile that went out of control during a massive Russian strike, Defense Magazine recalls.

A friendly missile. Two dead. A Russian strike at the same moment.

The risk of the screen

I do not brush this risk aside. It is real, dated, and it carries the name of a village.

Firing on the word of a screen means accepting that one day the screen will be wrong. A stray Ukrainian interceptor. A civilian aircraft. A jammed signal.

And positive identification alone says nothing about the object’s hostile intent, the Polish site Defence24 points out.

A Polish mistake would hand Moscow the means to turn the story around.

Firing faster also means being wrong faster.

What radar doesn’t say on its own

Six data points instead of a glance

And yet the new rule does not replace the eye with a single dot on a screen.

It combines radar data, identification friend or foe, direction of approach, speed, altitude and trajectory, Defense Magazine explains.

An airliner follows a flight plan and identifies itself by transponder. A Kh-101 coming from the east does neither.

The formal difference is large, Defence24 sums up. One rests on the pilot’s eye. The other, on radar and related data, cross-checked with speed and trajectory.

Six data points. Not one.

A decision still made by people

The rule targets objects that arrive from the direction of Russia. The decision stays with a pilot or the operations commander, not with a machine.

The Polish system now plans to authorize Patriots in advance as soon as an enemy missile launch is announced, and to suspend civilian traffic in case of a threat.

And Przewodów happened under the rule of the eye. The eye prevented nothing.

Przewodów is a reason to identify better. It is not a reason to hold fire.

Six data points read well beat one glance too late.

Wartime logic in peacetime

What Tomczyk admits

I must also grant what troubles my own argument.

Tomczyk admits it himself: these rules belonged to a state of war. Warsaw now applies part of wartime logic to the daily defence of NATO’s eastern flank, Defense Magazine writes.

That is not a detail. A democracy that adopts the reflexes of war in peacetime takes a risk with itself.

Tomczyk also says he wants to reassure the crews: the state stands behind them, Defense Magazine reports. A pilot who fires without seeing would need that support the day he got it wrong.

A wartime rule in peacetime. Decided by a general. Announced in a factory.

I admit it. It bothers me.

The nights ahead

Nobody yet knows whether positive identification will reduce errors or create them, the magazine concedes. The answer will come from the nights ahead, over Lublin, Podlasie and Masuria.

For a long time I believed that seeing before firing was a mark of civilization. I still do.

It’s true. And yet civilization has never required waiting for the impact before checking.

It isn’t war that changes the rule. It’s speed.

Tens of seconds

Between radar and impact

Back to the seconds.

The time between a radar detecting a target and its impact is measured in tens of seconds, Defense Magazine writes.

Tens of seconds. The same order of magnitude as the Mi-8 over Braniewo.

Thirty-nine seconds at Oserdów. Forty-two at Braniewo. A few dozen between a radar and an impact.

The Mi-8 was slow. The Mi-8 was visible. The Mi-8 was alone. It dawdled for forty-two seconds.

A jet-powered drone doesn’t dawdle. Neither does a cruise missile.

A field, then a street

At Tarnawa-Kolonia, the Kh-101 found a field. It could have found a street.

A street is a lit kitchen. A child doing homework. A door banging in the wind.

Nobody was hurt that July night. Nobody had been warned, either.

I write this slowly.

Yesterday’s rule would have asked the pilot to go and look. The missile would not have waited.

The seconds we give the eye, the missile takes.

San, €3.5 billion

A shield under construction

The rule is not enough. You need something to fire with.

Against drones, Poland is developing the San program, worth about €3.5 billion, partly funded by the European SAFE instrument, according to Defense Magazine. It includes 18 mobile batteries, with radars, electronic warfare, guns and interceptor drones.

Lower down, the Pilica and Pilica+ layers, with 23 mm guns, Piorun and CAMM missiles, SkyCtrl jamming. Higher up, the Wisła program, with Patriot batteries. In the air, F-16s, and the first F-35As, which arrived at Łask air base in 2026.

Costly missiles against cheap drones

The goal, the magazine writes: expensive missiles fired from fighter jets should no longer be the only answer to cheap kamikaze drones.

That is the real calculation. A cheap drone that forces an expensive missile into the air wins, even when it is shot down. A war of attrition also runs through the invoice.

A shield that fires only after seeing arrives too late. A shield that fires at everything it sees goes broke.

Fire fast, and fire cheaper.

The flank we share

Eastern Sentry

After the night of September 2025, NATO shot down Russian drones over Alliance territory for the first time, and launched Operation Eastern Sentry, Defense Magazine recalls.

Dutch aircraft fired. Czech crews now patrol with attack helicopters.

In September, Czech Gripens took off from Pardubice to watch over eastern Poland during a wave of Russian drones on western Ukraine. They did not have to step in.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said this month that Russian escalation was a fact, and that attacks on Polish territory could not be ruled out, according to the magazine.

One rule for every ally

The Alliance fired once, in September 2025. It learned that it could.

The Polish rule covers a single country. The sky it protects belongs to the whole Alliance.

Every ally that keeps yesterday’s rule offers Moscow a border slower than the rest.

Romania, which counted ten minutes without being able to name the target, now knows it too.

A slow border draws the probes.

Tomorrow’s pilot

What Warsaw accepts

Warsaw has chosen. It accepts the risk of a mistake over the certainty of an impact.

It is a grown-up choice. It may carry a price one day, and on that day it will have to be defended all over again.

The Poles of Braniewo, Dorohusk and Tarnawa-Kolonia live under that choice. Not us. Not yet.

We watch this from far away. The sky over Braniewo is not ours. It belongs to an Alliance we are part of.

A mistake to forgive

What mistake are we ready to forgive a pilot who fired too soon?

That one, or the one where we watched a missile go by.

There may be a mistake one day. There have already been impacts.

There is no third option in a sky that moves this fast.

On the radar’s word, forty-two seconds will be enough to fire.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces — Russian Mi-8 incursion near Braniewo, September 23, 2026
• RMF24 — Cezary Tomczyk in Dęblin on the new firing rules, September 28, 2026
• Romanian Ministry of National Defence — statement no. 200 on the Tulcea air target, September 28, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Kyiv Independent — Poland eases its firing rules, September 28, 2026
• Defense Magazine — positive identification, Przewodów, Tarnawa-Kolonia and the San program, September 2026
• Kyiv Independent — Russian drone near the Iahodyn crossing, September 28, 2026