The potential clients for technology such as electronic jammers and interceptor drones tested at the Brétigny-sur-Orge site are no longer just governments, police and armies.

Private firms and state entities across Europe that operate critical infrastructure want to strengthen their defenses, with some utilities asking for authorization to shoot drones down themselves. From Paris to Berlin, governments are taking note.

They are worried that hybrid warfare or a drone attack could knock out power to millions of people — as has happened frequently in Ukraine after Russian strikes.

“It is a theoretical, and increasingly a practical, possibility that there could be heating outages this winter due to hybrid attacks,” Kristian Ruby, secretary general of European energy body Eurelectric, told Reuters.

Some European governments are responding by starting to give firms powers traditionally confined to the military. Interviews by Reuters with over 30 company executives, officials and drone experts meanwhile show the technology to detect and bring down drones is maturing faster than the rules on who may use it.

Approaches vary widely across Europe and legal uncertainties remain, including over who has the right to order a response to a drone threat. Bringing down a drone could cause injury or death to people on the ground or damage property, raising questions for companies about liability and accountability.

“Defenseless”

France is among countries that have led the way. Its parliament passed a law in August allowing approved operators of critical infrastructure and contractors to detect, jam and shoot down drones near designated facilities.

The law passed by the French parliament in August responded to a wave of drone incursions over critical and military sites, including flights over the Ile Longue nuclear submarine base near Brest in northwestern France in December 2025.

France wants a newly expanded list of sensitive sites deemed of vital importance equipped by 2027, a senior French official involved in the plans told Reuters, asking not to be named because details of the plan are not yet public.

“We were defenseless in the face of the (drone) threat,” the official said, adding that concerns had been growing over the last decade as unmanned aerial vehicles became more accessible and more common.

The French government wants to give operators of critical infrastructure such as state-owned utility company EDF and state-owned railway company SNCF a catalogue of approved systems ranging from electronic jammers to interceptor drones, depending on different environments and situations.

Confirming important elements of the plan outlined by the French official, Systematic Paris-Region, which runs the government testing program at Brétigny-sur-Orge, said evaluations launched this summer had so far catalogued three systems integrators — which combine different computer systems into a unified whole — and 17 counter-drone systems.

It said assessments were continuing and work was underway to accelerate procurement from among those solutions.

France’s defense ministry said the law passed in August would help strengthen capabilities to counter the threat, though it said it could speak only for the critical infrastructure under its authority. EDF and SNCF declined comment.

Who can bring down a drone?

The discovery of an explosives-laden drone near a Ukrainian cargo plane at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle airport in August underlined how far the risks have spread.

Germany blamed Russia for the incident. Moscow denied it was behind it, and has repeatedly denied carrying out hybrid attacks in Europe, many of which have been in countries that support Kyiv in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But concerns are growing that national authorities cannot respond fast enough to protect widely dispersed infrastructure against such attacks, and that the damage caused by relatively cheap drones could bring hefty repair costs.

In Germany, where counter-drone operations remain a policing function, the interior ministry told Reuters it was reviewing how critical infrastructure operators and third parties could be legally involved in active counter-drone measures.

In September, Austria announced plans to give similar powers to critical infrastructure operators, including large energy firms. Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner told a press conference that the state could not protect every site on its own.

Poland has gone further. Operators told Reuters they have deployed counter-drone systems and trained with military and police units. Drone-restricted zones have been established around critical energy infrastructure, and designated security units working for operators have been authorized to destroy, disable or take control of drones entering them.

But two sources at energy transmission companies on NATO’s eastern flank told Reuters that effective intervention still requires more assurances, and perhaps a judicial precedent, on who bears responsibility for collateral damage.

Without that certainty, they said, operators of critical infrastructure could remain reluctant to neutralize drones because bringing one down could itself cause injury or costly damage.

Built for recovery

Having powers to bring down drones would be a change of approach for companies across Europe.

Executives, officials and energy analysts told Reuters that utilities have spent years hardening networks and preparing to restore disrupted services, rather than preventing attacks.

Leonhard Birnbaum, chief executive of German energy firm E.ON, said in September that operators must assume some attacks will succeed, rather than plan on stopping all of them. The company operates about 2,720 substations across Germany, he said.

Lithuania is building a fortified substation near its border with Russia as part of plans by the Baltic states and Poland to improve their defenses that include constructing bunkers, installing anti-drone nets and building up stocks of hard-to-replace equipment for critical parts of the energy grid.

Poland’s state-owned transmission operator PSE patrols parts of its about 16,500-km (10,250-mile) high-voltage network by helicopter and is preparing more powerful aircraft to help protect an undersea power link to Sweden.

Yet relatively inexpensive drones are challenging such defenses. Essential equipment such as large transformers can take years to replace, while even a successful repair can leave infrastructure out of service for months.

Not all utility operators are seeking a bigger role in defending themselves.

Asta Sihvonen-Punkka, chief executive of Finland’s national power grid operator Fingrid, told Reuters that responsibility for countering threats around critical infrastructure should remain with Finnish authorities and armed forces.

Any move to give such powers to utility operators would be “a very, very big change” requiring careful legal consideration, she said.

Jari Stenius, head of security of Finnish utility Fortum, said he was content for energy companies to focus on producing energy while police and military authorities handled security threats.

Technology ready, rules are not

Security officials and counter-drone technology firms say systems are becoming increasingly automated because operators cannot station specialist teams at every site.

Modern counter-drone systems combine sensors, command-and-control software and countermeasures into a single chain designed to identify, classify and respond to threats within seconds.

Several companies told Reuters that uncertainty over who can authorize a response has slowed investment in the latter stages of that process. France is therefore trying to automate the process as much as possible, said the senior French official involved in France’s plans.

The official said security workers at utilities should eventually be able to detect a threat and launch an automated response at the press of a button, because having operators trained to use military-grade solutions at every location was unrealistic.

German defense company Rheinmetall told Reuters the biggest hurdle for civilian operators was often the delay between detecting a drone and deciding whether to deploy a countermeasure, as legal responsibilities remain fragmented.

Rheinmetall said interest from private infrastructure operators in counter-drone systems was rising sharply.

The company said it was conducting workshops, site surveys and infrastructure assessments for operators and was preparing for what it described as a “very fast-growing” market segment.

(Reporting by Maria Rugamer and Leo Marchandon in Gdansk, Florence Loeve in Paris and Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw.)

Head of Army Cyber Command Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank on Monday at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington gave an approximate timeline for when the service would be delivering the new unit devoted to the exact same mission as the 11th Cyber Battalion, dubbed the Leviathans.

“It should start standing up in earnest within the next couple months, and it will be an exact replica of the 11th Cyber Warfare Battalion,” Eubank said.

The new battalion will achieve initial operating capability within the next year and from there work toward full operational capability, according to the Cyber Command leader.

The battalion is currently working on behalf of Joint Task Force–Southern Border, providing radio frequency-enabled cyber effects as directed by the division commander, Eubank said.

The Leviathans was activated on Oct. 16, 2022, as the first scalable expeditionary capability to handle the Army’s current and future cyberspace objectives.

It was built with the specific intention of rolling out non-lethal and non-kinetic effects that include cyberspace and electronic warfare assets.

Its previous iteration, the 915th Cyber Warfare Battalion, was activated on June 6, 2018, before being renamed during the 11th Cyber Battalion’s activation.

At the time of the battalion’s creation, the Army said it planned to have 12 expeditionary teams it could deploy under the 11th Cyber Battalion by September 2027.

The service has labeled the battalion the first of its kind.

“Just as Gen. Patton led the modernization of tank warfare into WWII, the leaders and soldiers of the 11th Cyber Battalion spearhead concept development for the delivery of CEMA [cyber electromagnetic activity] combat power to the tactical edge of the contemporary battlefield,” said Lt. Col. Lou Etienne, who led the 11th Cyber Battalion until June 25.

Developers from 11th Cyber Command worked alongside the Cyber Solutions Development unit within the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade to develop new drone technology between July 2025 and July 2026.

The partnership project was performed to support the Army’s “Transforming in Contact” initiative, which delivers new unmanned technology to soldiers to track their feedback in real time as they utilize it in the field.

The 11th Cyber Battalion also participated in a demonstration at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, from August. 5-8, simultaneously deploying three new Army technologies and proving their efficacy in diffusing electromagnetic threats from enemies.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed AUSA attendees at the Project Agincourt panel on Wednesday, sharing that the Pentagon is requesting roughly $50 billion in reconciliation funding to support the push to scale autonomous and robotic systems.

This request is part of an effort to make the technology available in far greater numbers.

The figure is separate from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $53.6 billion for the Drone Dominance initiative. That request covers $16.9 billion for unmanned-system procurement, $14.4 billion for counter-unmanned systems, $13.5 billion for contested logistics, $4.5 billion for collaborative autonomy and $4.3 billion for institutional systems and personnel. The budget request does not establish that the reconciliation funding Hegseth cited is the same money or that it is dedicated entirely to drone purchases

Hegseth characterized the funding as a one-time investment rather than a recurring annual allocation, intended to accelerate the development and production of autonomous and robotic systems.

“Ultimately we will be dealing with hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions in years to come at a pace that this department’s never ever seen before.”

The Defense Secretary said the Pentagon must make it easier for new companies to compete in a defense market long dominated by established contractors and costly platforms. Traditional defense firms remain important, he said, but the department also needs lower-cost systems that can be manufactured at scale.

The Army’s Drone Dominance program offers a concrete measure of that ambition. In a December 2025 announcement, the Army said a $1 billion initiative would fund approximately 340,000 small unmanned aircraft systems for combat units over two years. The service said it expected to deliver tens of thousands of drones in 2026 and hundreds of thousands by 2027.

Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said the service is broadening access to its programs for companies outside the traditional defense industrial base. The Army, he said, must make room for new entrants while continuing to work with established suppliers.

Telle also described plans to coordinate the Army’s autonomous-systems efforts while distributing capabilities to operational units. The service is developing an approach that incorporates drones, autonomous ground systems, autonomous fires and autonomous lift into future combat operations.

“We have an MOS in the Army, 390A, where warrant officers could keep the speciality and the skills over the duration to teach our soldiers how to do robotics,” Telle added.

Expanding access to Army test ranges is another part of that effort, Telle said. Greater access gives developers more opportunities to test systems and receive feedback from military users. He also described efforts to share lessons across the force rather than have individual units and organizations solve the same problems independently.

Hegseth said the department must remove bureaucratic barriers that slow the adoption of new technology, telling the panel, “I want you to tell me which rules can be signed away.” He urged officials to identify rules and directives that could be changed without involving new legislation to accelerate progress.

The service will pay a one-year total of $93.6 million, spread out across nine companies, to create applications for its Next Generation Command and Control, or NGC2, software.

“While the Army is providing capability we can deploy today, we’re also providing a blueprint and reference point for how industry can integrate in the future with interoperability and speed,” said Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor, portfolio management executive for the Command and Control Information Network.

The NGC2 will provide a shared network for technologies, weapons, sensors, devices and applications to operate within that will increase decision-making speed on the battlefield.

The chosen companies include General Dynamics Mission Systems, Air Space Intelligence Federal, Immersive Wisdom, LMI, Mente Systems, Stilman Advanced Strategies, Onebrief, Rune Technologies and AIR.

The applications will be hosted on the common data baseline, or software foundation, that Anduril Industries, Palantir, Raft and Striveworks have built in collaboration with the Army.

The NGC2 system, in conjunction with the applications the companies build for it, will allow information sharing that streamlines mission completion across the Army’s six warfighting functions of command and control, fires, intelligence, movement and maneuver, sustainment and protection, the service said.

The Army is currently in the process of delivering the NGC2 software to the I Corps, which commands service members in the Indo-Pacific.

The move will further test NGC2 software’s ability to host technologies and devices separated by thousands of miles, some in communication-contested environments.

The Army has spent the last year moving from the experimental phase to the fielding phase of NGC2, going from prototype development to placing software in the hands of soldiers at the 4th and 25th Infantry Divisions.

In July 2026, the Army hosted a 10-day event at Fort Irwin, California, entitled Project Convergence-Capstone 6, that asked 10,000 participants from U.S. and allied forces as well as industry partners using 90 technologies to test software for the NGC2.

The service conducted a joint force exercise shortly after in May at Fort Irwin that marked the end of the NGC2 prototype phase and came away stating that the new platform was ready to be scaled up.

The Army awarded Anduril Industries a $162.8 million contract on Sept. 30 worth up to 1.8 billion to continue refining the NGC2’s common data baseline, or software foundation.