The Cognitive BattlefiField: How Russian Drone Incursions Weaponise Uncertainty to Erode NATO's Social Resilience

Welcome to The StratComm Insights! 

In this Insight Edition we explore the strategic communication implications and possible support measures following Russia's recent drone incursions in NATO Allies' airspace.

The New Normal of Normalised Aggression

The Russian drone incursions into Polish and Romanian airspace, and the recent jet incursions into Estonia represent far more than tactical probes or intelligence-gathering operations. The bigger concern has to be how they constitute a sophisticated cognitive warfare campaign designed to fundamentally alter Western perceptions of sovereignty, deterrence, and the thresholds of acceptable state behaviour. Aside from Russia’s wider kinetic and information activity, by violating NATO airspace with impunity whilst maintaining plausible deniability, Russia continues to weaponise ambiguity to create a dangerous precedent that systematically undermines the psychological foundations of collective defence.

What makes these incursions particularly insidious is their deliberate positioning below the threshold of unambiguous casus belli whilst simultaneously crossing sovereign boundaries that would traditionally demand immediate and decisive military response. This calculated ambiguity forces NATO into a perpetual state of strategic hesitation, where the alliance must continually recalibrate its understanding of what constitutes an acceptable provocation versus an act of war. Most damaging is the cognitive effect this is having on people’s attitude towards both Russia and NATO.

Erosion of Deterrence Through Graduated Escalation

Traditional deterrence theory relies upon clear red lines and predictable consequences. Russian drone incursions deliberately blurs these lines through what military analysts term "graduated escalation", a systematic process of normalising increasingly aggressive behaviour through repetitive boundary violations. Classic hybrid warfare tactics. However, each unopposed incursion establishes a new baseline of acceptable aggression, progressively shifting the Overton window of what NATO populations perceive as normal state behaviour. The military might respond well, but there are the additional impacts this has, which play into Putin’s long term strategy.

The psychological impact operates on multiple levels simultaneously. At the strategic level, Russian actions signal to decision-makers that Moscow believes it can violate NATO sovereignty without triggering Article 5 responses. At the operational level, repeated incursions force NATO air defence systems into expensive and resource-intensive responses, demonstrating the alliance's inability to prevent rather than merely react to violations (something which action can be taken rapidly to redress). What is being less discussed, and is equally critical, is at the societal level, these incidents generate a pervasive sense that NATO's protective guarantees may be hollow promises rather than credible commitments.

Each violation that passes without proportionate response, and with confused messaging in reaction from NATO leaders, becomes a data point in a broader narrative of Western weakness and declining deterrent credibility. This cumulative effect serves Russia's strategic objective of demonstrating that NATO's red lines are fluid and its collective defence commitments are subject to revision under pressure.

Cognitive Dissonance and Public Confidence

The drone incursions create profound cognitive dissonance within NATO populations by simultaneously confirming and contradicting fundamental assumptions about security and sovereignty. Citizens observe their airspace being violated whilst their governments respond with diplomatic protests rather than military action, creating a jarring disconnect between the severity of the violation and the mildness of the response - there is no reciprocal action, and whilst this is for the many legitimate strategic reasons, the cognitive impact on our populations still takes effect.

This dissonance manifests in several psychologically damaging ways.

Firstly, it undermines public confidence in governmental competence and commitment to national defence. When leaders describe drone incursions as "reckless" and "unacceptable" yet fail to impose meaningful costs on the perpetrators, citizens naturally question whether their governments possess either the capability or resolve to protect them. (Such questioning takes place both within mainstream discourse, but more forcefully in agitating extremes and at a greater level still in conspiracy circles - all of which undermine the national and NATO narrative, and with little prompting play into Russian narrative strategy).

Secondly, the repeated nature of these violations without escalatory consequences creates learned helplessness within affected populations. Citizens become psychologically conditioned to accept sovereignty violations as inevitable rather than preventable, gradually eroding the social contract between government and governed regarding basic security provision - and handing power to the enemy.

Third, and most perniciously, these incidents foster what cognitive warfare specialists term "strategic confusion", a state where populations become uncertain about fundamental questions of alliance commitment, threat assessment, and appropriate response thresholds. This confusion serves Russian interests by making NATO populations more amenable to accommodation and less supportive of robust collective defence measures. In other words, it undermines NATO - Putin’s no.1 strategic aim.

Information Warfare and Narrative Manipulation

Furthermore, the drone incursions function as triggers for broader information warfare campaigns designed to amplify their psychological impact through narrative manipulation. Russian-aligned information networks immediately exploit each incident to promote several complementary themes: NATO's defensive inadequacy, the dangerous escalatory potential of alliance responses, and the possibility that Ukraine is dragging NATO into unwanted conflict.

Polish analysts identified immediate surges in disinformation following the September incidents, with Russian and Belarusian sources promoting narratives suggesting that Poland was "effectively at war" with Russia - a false claim designed to generate panic and undermine public support for continued Ukrainian assistance, and again highlight a weakness in the leadership not taking responsive action. These information operations exploit the natural anxiety created by airspace violations to amplify fear and promote policy preferences aligned with Russian objectives.

The sophisticated nature of these campaigns demonstrates Russia's understanding that cognitive warfare operates through multiple vectors simultaneously. Physical provocations create emotional vulnerability, whilst information operations exploit that vulnerability to shape public opinion and policy preferences. The combination proves far more effective than either approach in isolation. It is a space Russia dominates and NATO is still struggling to catch up - especially when it comes to narrative defence on our own populations.

Normalisation and the Boiling Frog Syndrome

Perhaps the most dangerous long-term effect of repeated drone incursions is the gradual normalisation of previously unacceptable behaviour. Each incident that passes without escalatory consequences makes future violations appear less shocking and extraordinary. This psychological process, analogous to the "boiling frog" syndrome, gradually accustomed NATO populations to accepting sovereignty violations as manageable inconveniences rather than serious threats requiring decisive response.

This normalisation serves Russian strategic objectives in multiple ways. It reduces public pressure on NATO governments to respond robustly to future provocations, creates precedents for increasingly aggressive behaviour, and undermines the psychological foundations of deterrence by demonstrating that red lines are negotiable rather than absolute.

The cumulative effect is to transform what should be exceptional events - direct violations of NATO territory by hostile forces - into routine occurrences requiring only administrative responses. This transformation represents a fundamental victory for Russian hybrid warfare strategy, as it achieves territorial penetration without triggering collective defence responses whilst simultaneously eroding public confidence in alliance capabilities and commitments.

Implications for Democratic Resilience

The cognitive warfare dimensions of drone incursions pose particular challenges for democratic societies, whose open information and media environments and pluralistic debate structures make them inherently vulnerable to narrative manipulation and psychological operations. Unlike authoritarian systems that can control information flows and suppress dissent, democracies must maintain their openness whilst defending against cognitive attacks designed to exploit that very openness.

Russian operations deliberately target democratic vulnerabilities by promoting divisive narratives that fragment public opinion and undermine consensus-building capacity. In Poland, information campaigns sought to blame Ukraine rather than Russia for the airspace violations, exploiting natural frustrations about being drawn into conflict to weaken solidarity with Kyiv. Similar operations in other NATO countries promote themes of American abandonment, alliance unreliability, and the futility of resistance to Russian power.

These attacks on democratic resilience operate through what NATO cognitive warfare specialists describe as "trust degradation" - systematic efforts to undermine public confidence in institutions, allies, and shared narratives about threats and responses. The objective is not merely to influence specific policy decisions but to fundamentally weaken the social cohesion and institutional legitimacy that enable effective collective action.

Strategic Communication Failures

NATO's response to the drone incursions, whilst operationally successful in terms of interception and coordination, revealed significant vulnerabilities in strategic communication and public messaging. The alliance's emphasis on technical military capabilities rather than broader strategic implications allowed Russian information operations to fill narrative vacuums with messages aligned to Moscow's objectives.

The delayed and fragmented nature of official responses created opportunities for adversarial messaging to establish dominant narratives even as NATO tries to provide authoritative interpretations of events. President Trump's suggestion that the violations might have been accidental provided particularly damaging ammunition for Russian claims that NATO lacked coherent threat assessment capabilities.

As NATO's Allied Command Transformation (2024) acknowledges that adversaries influence the attitudes, decisions, and behaviours of individuals, groups, and society through cognitive attacks that "aim to exploit our strengths as vulnerabilities to weaken the Alliance." The ongoing failure to adequately and strategically respond (rather than tactically counter and refute) these narratives represents a significant strategic vulnerability.

Long-term Strategic Implications

The cognitive warfare dimensions of Russian drone incursions represent components of a broader strategy designed to achieve political objectives without triggering kinetic responses. By systematically undermining public confidence in NATO's protective capabilities whilst demonstrating the alliance's inability to prevent territorial violations, Russia seeks to create conditions where accommodation appears preferable to confrontation.

The ultimate objective is not military conquest but political capitulation - achieving through psychological pressure what would prove prohibitively costly through conventional military action. Each successful violation without meaningful response advances this objective by demonstrating Western weakness whilst normalising Russian aggression.

The implications extend far beyond immediate multilateral relations to fundamental questions about the durability of the international order established after 1945. If sovereignty violations feel like they become routine rather than exceptional, if collective defence commitments are seen as hollow rather than credible, and if democratic societies seem unable to maintain consensus in the face of sustained psychological pressure, then the institutional foundations of Western security architecture may prove insufficient for the challenges ahead. Putin’s power in the narrative realm comes from the fact that these elements don’t need to be true - all that matters is that the narrative resonates in a large enough proportion of the population to have the desired strategic effect.

Towards Cognitive Resilience

Addressing the cognitive warfare dimensions of drone incursions requires recognition that the battle for public opinion is as important as the contest for airspace control. NATO must develop more, and comprehensive approaches to cognitive defence that combine technical military capabilities with sophisticated strategic communication and public education programmes designed to enhance societal resilience against psychological manipulation, whilst promoting the core NATO narratives - that is both the NATO corporate (or which there has been effort in recent years) and the western ideological narratives.

This involves not merely reactive responses to specific incidents but proactive efforts to strengthen public understanding of hybrid warfare tactics, improve institutional communication capabilities, build social cohesion against divisive information operations, and more strongly promote the western European narrative that is often taken for granted. The alternative is continued vulnerability to cognitive attacks that achieve strategic objectives without triggering collective defence responses.

The dial is slowly moving in this direction, but responses still focus on countering information operations, mainly through channels that speak to those to whom the mainstream narrative resonates, and in a broadcast information fashion, rather than dialogue and debate. That won’t draw back those already flirting with disillusion, and it won't fill the gap of promoting the western liberal democratic narrative into those at risk of susceptibility to our enemies propaganda. These gaps still remain.

The drone incursions thus serve as both immediate tactical provocations and components of longer-term strategic campaigns designed to fundamentally alter the psychological foundations of Western security. Recognising and countering these operations requires responding to known contemporary conflict challenge; that the battle for minds may prove more decisive than the contest for territory.

Sources and Further Reading

Think Tank and Policy Analysis

• Atlantic Council Eurasia Center. (2025). "Hybrid warfare and drone operations in Eastern Europe."

• Academic and Military Analysis Sources

• Bernal, A., et al. (2020). "Cognitive warfare: differentiation from information warfare." Military Review.

• Backes, O., & Swab, A. (2019). "Cognitive warfare: A strategy that focuses on altering how a target population thinks." Defense & Security Analysis.

• Deppe C, Schaal GS. Cognitive warfare: a conceptual analysis of the NATO ACT cognitive warfare exploratory concept. Front Big Data. 2024 Nov 1;7:1452129

• Gerasimov, V. (2013). "The value of science is in the foresight: New challenges demand rethinking the forms and methods of carrying out combat operations." Military Review, 93(1), 23-29.

• Hoffman, F. G. (2007). "Conflict in the 21st century: The rise of hybrid wars." Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

• Institute for the Study of War. (Various briefings, 2025). "Russian drone operations and strategic objectives"

• Jaitner, M., & Kantola, A. (2016). "Russian reflexive control theory and its implications for Western strategy." Strategic Studies Quarterly.

• NATO Allied Command Transformation. (2023). "Cognitive Warfare Exploratory Concept." Allied Command Transformation.

• Tashev, B., et al. (2022). "Russian information warfare tactics in the digital age." Information Security Journal.

Other sources

• ABC News. "Poland, Romania scramble jets as NATO ally records new Russian drone violation." 14 September 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/International/poland-romania-scramble-jets-nato-allies-record-new/story?id=125551928

• ABC News. "What to know about 'Eastern Sentry,' NATO's response to Russian drones." 15 September 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/International/eastern-sentry-natos-response-russian-drones/story?id=125576971

• ABC News. "With Poland drone attack, Putin is testing Europe and Trump: ANALYSIS." 11 September 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/International/poland-drone-attack-putin-testing-europe-trump-analysis/story?id=125428741

• Atlantic Council. "Only Ukraine can teach NATO how to combat Putin's growing drone fleet." 16 September 2025. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/only-ukraine-can-teach-nato-how-to-combat-putins-growing-drone-fleet/

• Axios. "Romania becomes 2nd NATO nation in a week to report Russian drone in its airspace." 15 September 2025. https://www.axios.com/2025/09/14/russia-romania-drone-ukraine-nato-eu

• CNN. "NATO launches 'Eastern Sentry' operation in response to Russian drone incursions." 12 September 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/12/world/nato-operation-eastern-sentry-russia-poland-latam-intl

• CNN. "NATO shoots down Russian drones in Polish airspace, accusing Moscow of being 'absolutely reckless'." 10 September 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/09/europe/poland-scramble-jets-russian-drone-reports-intl-hnk-ml

• CNN. "Russia-Belarus military drill tests nerves on NATO's eastern flank at the end of a tense week." 12 September 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/12/europe/zapad-russia-belarus-military-exercise-nato-intl

• CNN Politics. "Trump on Russia's incursion into NATO: 'Here we go!'" 11 September 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/politics/trump-poland-russia-response

• Defense24. "Russian Drones Challenge NATO's Eastern Flank." 10 September 2025. https://defence24.com/geopolitics/russian-drones-challenge-natos-eastern-flank

• DefenseScoop. "Russian drone incursions prompt NATO to initiate new military activity on its eastern flank." 12 September 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/09/12/nato-eastern-sentry-russian-drone-incursions-poland/

• Frontiers in Big Data. "Cognitive warfare: a conceptual analysis of the NATO ACT cognitive warfare exploratory concept." 16 October 2024. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/big-data/articles/10.3389/fdata.2024.1452129/full

• Kyiv Independent. "NATO 'at war' with Russia, Kremlin says, as propaganda blitz after Poland drone attack continues." 15 September 2025. https://kyivindependent.com/kremlin-claims-nato-at-war-with-russia/

• NATO Allied Command Transformation. "Allied Command Transformation develops the Cognitive Warfare Concept to Combat Disinformation and Defend Against 'Cognitive Warfare'." 3 July 2024. https://www.act.nato.int/article/cogwar-concept/

• NATO Allied Command Transformation. "Cognitive Warfare." 22 November 2023. https://www.act.nato.int/activities/cognitive-warfare/

• NATO Allied Command Transformation. "Cognitive Warfare: Strengthening and Defending the Mind." 3 July 2023. https://www.act.nato.int/article/cognitive-warfare-strengthening-and-defending-the-mind/

• NATO Allied Command Transformation. "Navigating the Cognitive Battlefield: Key Takeaways from the 2024 NATO Communicators Conference." 30 August 2024. https://www.act.nato.int/article/ncc-2024/

• NATO Headquarters. "Statement by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on the violation of Polish airspace by Russian drones, 10-Sep.-2025." 10 September 2025. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_237559.htm

• NATO Review. "Countering cognitive warfare: awareness and resilience." 20 May 2021. https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/05/20/countering-cognitive-warfare-awareness-and-resilience/index.html

• NATO Review. "Russia's hybrid war against the West." 26 April 2024. https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2024/04/26/russias-hybrid-war-against-the-west/

• Newsweek. "NATO Launches 'Eastern Sentry' Program After Russia Drones Violate Poland Airspace." 12 September 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/nato-makes-major-announcement-bolsters-eastern-flank-against-russia-2129027

• Newsweek. "Poland Invokes NATO's Article 4 Over Russia's Drones As Tensions Rise." 10 September 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/nato-russia-ukraine-poland-war-trump-article-4-2127472

• Newsweek. "Russia 'Tried To Test' NATO With 'Dud' Drones: Poland." 14 September 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/russia-test-nato-dud-drones-ukraine-poland-2129561 PBS NewsHour. "NATO responds to Russia's drone incursion with 'Eastern Sentry' defense plan." 13 September 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/nato-responds-to-russias-drone-incursion-with-eastern-sentry-defense-plan

• Penn Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. "Beyond defense: a call to arms for cognitive warfare." 19 May 2024. https://www.penncerl.org/the-rule-of-law-post/beyond-defense-a-call-to-arms-for-cognitive-warfare/

• Second Line of Defense. "Russia's Adaptation to Drone Warfare." 14 September 2025. https://sldinfo.com/2025/09/russias-adaptation-to-drone-warfare/

• The Defense and Health Journal. "A Systematic Review Of Cognitive And Psychological Warfare." 1 December 2023. https://tdhj.org/blog/post/cognitive-psychological-warfare/

• UN News. "SECURITY COUNCIL LIVE: NATO allies rally round Poland in face of Russian incursion, as drone warfare takes centre stage." 12 September 2025. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165836