DRONES EVERYWHERE: NATO European Countries Plan to Build a ‘Drone Wall’ Against Russia – US State of Colorado to Use UAVs as Police First Responders | The Gateway expert

It’s a drone world.

Law enforcement agencies and military forces around the world are going all-in toward these unmanned flying vehicles that have become standard equipment to investigate and even attack enemies and intruders.

From the forests of Eastern Europe to America’s western mountains of Colorado, all we hear about are drones.

Drones everywhere.

On European battlefields, drones have long become the trump card for fighters – from small FPV quadcopters to large deadly craft such as the American Predator, the Russian Lancet, the Iranian Shahed or the Turkish Bayraktar drones.

As the war in Ukraine progresses, six NATO countries have agreed to build a ‘drone wall’ along their borders to defend themselves against what they see as Russian threats.

Telegraph reported:

“Norway, Poland and Finland will work with the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – to prevent Russian aggression, including forcing migrants across the border.

‘This is something completely new. A drone border from Norway to Poland,” Agne Bilotaite, Lithuania’s interior minister, told broadcaster Baltic News Service. ‘This will enable us to protect ourselves against provocations by unfriendly countries’.”

These EU countries on Russia’s border have become increasingly nervous that an emboldened President Vladimir Putin will turn to them once the war in Ukraine is over.

“In anticipation of this, Poland has spent billions on improving border defenses with Belarus, Estonia has built a network of border army bunkers and Finland, which shares an 830-mile border with Russia, has joined NATO.

Last year, Finland was forced to close its border crossings with Russia after the Kremlin flew in migrants from Asia and sent them across the border on bicycles. Finnish officials said Moscow was weaponizing migration to destabilize Europe.”

The ‘drone wall’ is still being planned and negotiated, and the agreement signed this weekend is just part of a broader approach to countering ‘the threat from Russia’.

“We have agreed to hold regional exercises to ensure the evacuation of the population, to see how our institutions are prepared to work and interact with each other.” [Lithuanian Minister Bilotaite] said.”

Since the start of the war, Russia has strengthened its military units along the border with EU countries and even moved nuclear missiles into Belarus.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, local law enforcement agencies in Colorado, including the Denver Police Department (DPD), ‘making plans to send drones instead of officers to respond to 911 calls’.

Fox news reported:

“’This really is the future of law enforcement at some point, whether we like it or not,’” said Sgt. Jeremiah Gates, who leads the drone unit at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, told JS.

At least two dozen agencies in Colorado’s Front Range already use drone technology for certain tasks, such as searching for missing people, tracking fleeing suspects, mapping crime scenes or overhead surveillance during SWAT operations. Now the sheriff’s office is considering using them to respond to some 911 calls in situations where the drones could provide useful information from the location of an incident before officers are deployed.

It would also help rule out calls that don’t require police intervention.

“’I could fly the drone over (a reported suspicious vehicle) and say, ‘Hey, that vehicle isn’t out of place,’ and I never had to send an officer to bother them and I can clear it up with that,” Gates told JS. ‘It saves resources’.”

Of course, you expect there will be legal problems with this approach. The Denver Police Department sidelined its only drone in 2018 over constitutional concerns.

But now plans to expand its drone program with the help of a $100,000 grant from the Denver Police Foundation.

“The long-term goal of what we’re trying to do is have drones as first responders,” Phil Gonshak, director of the department’s Strategic Initiatives Bureau, told JS. “Basically, we have stations on top of each of our districts so we can respond with drones to critical needs or emergencies that arise anywhere in the city.”

“We would never simply replace the call for help with police officers,” he continued. “The DPD would respond to any call for service where someone physically requests a police officer on the scene. But if there was a fight at Colfax and Cherokee and we put a drone in the air and there is no fight and nothing is causing traffic problems, we would divert our police officers to other urgent calls.”