An Armed attack under Article 5: legal justification for the NATO response to drone incursion into Poland in 2025
Radosław Fordoński
Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie UWMhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8127-5986
Abstract
The violation of Polish airspace on the night of 9–10 September 2025 consisted of two parallel military operations: a deployment of a swarm of unarmed combat drones against critical NATO military infrastructure in the Rzeszów-Jasionka logistics hub (protected by NATO forces); and a long-distance penetration of airspace by unarmed combat drones and decoys, intended to undermine the guarantee of the inviolability of NATO territory contained in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. In response, NATO used military force against the Russian assets for the first time since the Alliance’s founding in 1949, despite the failure to trigger the Article 5 procedure. The use of force was limited to the destruction of drones threatening critical NATO infrastructure in the Rzeszów-Jasionka logistics centre. The purpose of the analysis is to verify the legal nature of the drone violation of Polish airspace in September 2025 as an armed attack and to determine the legal basis for the Alliance’s kinetic response to these actions. The analysis of the use of force indicates that the four member states responsible for the defence of the NATO logistics hub Rzeszów-Jasionka exercised their right to collective self-defence under Article 5 without invoking this provision. The lack of confirmation of the use of armed force and an armed attack by the Russian Federation in the formal assessment of the airspace violation may be questioned from the perspective of the law of the use of force in international relations, as the Russian Federation attacked: a) a tangible strategic target (NATO critical military infrastructure); b) an intangible strategic target in the form of an external security guarantee for Poland (NATO Article 5), without causing material collateral damage (injury or damage to ground facilities).
Keywords:
right to self-defence, Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, armed attack, drones, airspace violationsReferences
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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8127-5986
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