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Rapid communication – CBRNe implications of drone incursions in Europe

Written by Zoe Rutherford on .

Authors: Lars Thomsen, Soiwisa Soikum and Sergii Makovetskii

Gnacode Inc. 11 Sunrise Way SW, Medicine Hat, Alberta T1B4S3, Canada

Corresponding author: Lars Thomsen email:

 

Recent incursions in Europe by large numbers of drones reported in Poland the 10th of September 20251, and the 3rd of January in Denmark2 raises the concern that such devices could be utilized to disseminate biological weapons in aerosol format.

The Soviet Union developed a range of biological weapons and a large manufacturing capability employing 30000 people, although the Soviet Union in parallel signed the “1925 Geneva Protocol”, 1972/1975 Biological Weapons Convention. 

The Soviet program Biopreparat had an annualized production capacity for weaponized smallpox of 90 to 100 tons. The cynical reasoning was that following the world wide eradication of smallpox and the concomitant stop of the Small pox immunization programs in the 1970’ies, the western European populations were becoming vulnerable to smallpox3.

Similarly, Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC, 1993/1997) but it has been documented that the chemical agent chloropicrin has been used several times by Russian forces against Ukrainian troops at the Ukrainian/Russian front in violation of the CWC signed and ratified by Russia4. The Federal State Budgetary Institution 48th Central Scientific and Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (48TH TSNII) is the leading Russian Ministry of Defense scientific research institute responsible for Russian military protection against infectious diseases and biological threats. 48th TSNII and its facilities are associated with the Russian biological weapons program. 48th TSNII and its branches were previously added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List on August 27, 2020, and to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) Section 231 List of Specified Persons on March 2, 20214.

Russia has planned and executed delivery of chemical agents, and one can assume that they might have similar plans for biological agents. The effective use of biological warfare agents has always been hampered by good delivery mechanisms, a fact that make the Japanese Army give up the use of biological agents in World War II5, and which later prompted the Soviet Union to develop missiles for delivery6. Small drones provide low-cost devices which can be used for effective and widespread dissemination of biological warfare agents over large areas, as well as being very hard to stop.

In a simulation scenario of a biological attack, we used the approximate geolocation of 10 sites in Poland widely published in various media as being the location of downed Gerbera drones used as decoys for larger drones. We simulated a spread of a 50 kg (110 lb) weapons grade biological agent per drone, which is the payload of the Iranian produced HESA Shahed 136 drone.  A weapons grade powder of 50 kg (110 lb) can contain 5E16 CFU of Anthrax spiked with Smallpox per drone. We chose delivery as a single point dissemination, at a height of 10 meters, and we integrated the aerosol concentration from 0 to 4 meters above ground and tracked the spread over 24 hours, by a simple dispersion algorithm developed in Python and available wind data See Note 1.. In Poland the 10th of September the wind direction was west bound, whereas in the period 15th of August to 15th of September it has been east bound, except for the dates 8-10th of September. The results are shown in Figure 1.

 A simple measurement of area covered reveals that a single drone could in 24 hours affect 3-4% of the Polish land area, 10 drones as used in our simulation would affect 30-40% of the land, and 19 drones would affect 57-75% of the Polish land area. The 10th of September was characterized by low wind speeds of 4.75 m/sec which is ideal for effective dissemination. A combination payload of Anthrax and Smallpox would cause “inhalation anthrax” to develop with an incubation period of 5-6 days7 and cause widespread panic and people fleeing the affected areas. Smallpox with an incubation period of average 12 days8 will then be carried by infected refugees into the rest of Europe, with collapse of the healthcare system and other social structures, and mass casualties of millions of people within a period of 2-3 months.

Note 1: Open-source codes available at the company’s GitHub site, access can be given upon request.

  1. Charlish, A., Kelly, L. & Erling, B. Poland downs drones in its airspace, becoming first NATO member to fire during war in Ukraine. Reuters (2025).
  2. Danish police investigate mystery drone sightings – DW – 01/04/2025. dw.com https://www.dw.com/en/danish-police-investigate-mystery-drone-sightings/a-71217317.
  3. Gronvall, G. K. Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare Edited by Zygmunt F. Dembek Falls Church, Virginia: Office of The Surgeon General, United States Army; Washington, DC: Borden Institute, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 2007. 694 pp., Illustrated. $72.25 (hardcover). Clin. Infect. Dis. 48, 375–376 (2009).
  4. Imposing New Measures on Russia for its Full-Scale War and Use of Chemical Weapons Against Ukraine. United States Department of State https://2021-2025.state.gov/imposing-new-measures-on-russia-for-its-full-scale-war-and-use-of-chemical-weapons-against-ukraine-2/.
  5. Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945. (Oxford University Press, 1999).
  6. Alibek, K. & Handelman, S. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It. (Random House Publishing Group, 1999).
  7. Shafazand, S., Doyle, R., Ruoss, S., Weinacker, A. & Raffin, T. A. Inhalational Anthrax: Epidemiology, Diagnosis, and Management. Chest 116, 1369–1376 (1999).
  8. Simonsen, K. A. & Snowden, J. Smallpox. in StatPearls (StatPearls Publishing, Treasure Island (FL), 2025).

 

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