Cheap weaponized drones test airspace protections and Indonesia's rules
The spread of inexpensive drones is reshaping combat and disrupting civilian aviation, putting airspace protections under pressure. In Indonesia, a May 2026 legal analysis identifies an existing foundation for drone operations but significant gaps in rules governing their wider use.
Airport closures expose the civilian risks
Drone incursions have disrupted NATO airspace over Estonia, Germany, Poland and Romania, while sightings near major European airports have forced flight suspensions beyond the immediate boundaries of war.
One major incursion occurred on September 9, 2025, when about 23 drones entered Polish airspace, forcing four airports to close. Polish authorities blamed Russia. According to Euronews' fact-checking unit The Cube, a subsequent investigation by Polish general Maciej Klisz confirmed that several drones carried explosive charges, including decoys deployed to overload air defense systems.
Later that month, sightings over Copenhagen Airport on September 22-23 halted flights for four hours, with at least 109 cancellations and 51 redirections. Together with a simultaneous disruption at Oslo Airport, the incident affected more than 20,000 passengers. The Cube described it as 2025's largest drone-linked airport disruption.
The Oslo sightings were not subsequently verified. On November 6, 2025, Norwegian police closed their investigation, saying they were "unable to confirm or deny whether drones were actually observed on the night of September 23." Reuters reported that Denmark's investigation into the Copenhagen sightings remained open at that time.
The disruptions extended well beyond those two airports. In an analysis published November 20, 2025, covering more than 24 airports across 12 countries, The Cube found that European airport disruptions linked to drones quadrupled between January 2024 and November 2025. Germany's air navigation service provider, DFS, recorded 192 drone-related airport disturbances in 2025, compared with 141 in 2024. Denmark's civil aviation authority recorded 107 illegal drone flights near airports in 2025, against 92 the previous year.
Warfare shifts toward cheaper, expendable aircraft
The military transformation behind these airspace concerns is particularly visible in Ukraine. Writing in The Jakarta Post, Benjamyn I. Scott and Ridha Aditya Nugraha describe a shift away from the assumption that larger, more expensive unmanned aircraft offer the decisive advantage. Low-cost systems that can be deployed in large numbers have instead become central to attrition warfare.
Loitering munitions, including Iran's Shahed series and the American Switchblade, combine target acquisition and attack in an expendable aircraft. They can remain over an operational area before striking. Alongside these purpose-built weapons, commercially available drones can carry lethal payloads with little modification or operator training, including altered grenades dropped into trenches. The authors describe the resulting warfare as cheaper, more precise and substantially more lethal.
Ukraine's procurement figures illustrate the scale of the shift. On October 11, 2026, its Defense Ministry said its procurement agency had contracted for 5.5 times as many drones that year as during the corresponding period of 2025. Delivery volumes were almost 3.7 times higher. According to The Kyiv Independent, the ministry credited international partners' support and the expansion of Ukraine's defense industry.
In the Middle East, Iran's extensive use of Shahed-type drones has overwhelmed air defenses through the volume of attacks. That pressure reportedly led the United States to seek Ukrainian technical advice on counter-unmanned aircraft systems, drawing on expertise developed during the war.
An old military role, a different scale
Unmanned flight has a much longer military history than today's small drones. During the American Civil War, balloons served reconnaissance and bombardment roles, decades before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Observation from a distance and attacks from above remained central purposes as the technology evolved.
Later generations of military unmanned aerial vehicles became increasingly sophisticated and expensive, leaving advanced capabilities concentrated among a few powerful states. NATO forces used multimillion-dollar MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper aircraft extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq for sustained intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, as well as precision strikes. The proliferation of cheap, expendable aircraft marks a departure from that model.
International guidance and Indonesia's regulatory gaps
Threats to civilian aviation and ground infrastructure have also prompted a regulatory response. In 2023, the International Civil Aviation Organization issued Protection of Civil Aviation Infrastructure Against Unmanned Aircraft, an advisory framework calling on member states to coordinate protective measures while adapting them to local operating conditions.
Indonesia already has rules governing drone operations. In a May 2026 analysis published by Geotimes, Dr. Afen Sena identified Ministry of Transportation Regulations No. 37 of 2020 and No. 63 of 2021 as the country's operational legal foundation. They address where drones may operate, flight permits, altitude limits and safety requirements.
Sena's analysis nevertheless found that the framework remained centered on risk classification, licensing, airspace restrictions and safety compliance. As of May 2026, it did not comprehensively cover Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations or Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM).
The other gaps identified in the analysis included drone corridors and ports, the aerial data economy, drone logistics, Drone-as-a-Service and integration with smart city systems.