In the wake of Zelensky's warning about Russian airspace safety, risk expert Matt Borie returns to the podcast to discuss the effect of drone activity on civil aviation, conflict zone impacts on commercial air transport and more.
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Karen Walker (00:10): Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for Window Seat, our Aviation Week Air Transport podcast. I'm ATW and Aviation Week, Air Transport Editor-in-Chief, Karen Walker. Welcome on board. So I'm delighted to be joined once again by Matt Borie, who is a co-founder and chief intelligence officer at Osprey Flight Solutions. Matt, welcome and thank you for your time. Matt is a risk management expert with 15 years experience in aviation safety and security, specializing in conflict zone overflights. Before becoming a consultant at Osprey, Matt was an officer in the US Air Force. He joined his window seat in March shortly after the war between the US and Iran broke out. That war continues, of course, but this week we're focusing on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. And in particular, on a statement made on September the 1st by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying that Russian airspace had become completely unsafe and would be closing.
(01:17): Specifically he said, and I quote, "We want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer and everyone who still uses Russia's key airports. Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe. Ukraine does not threaten civil aviation as such, not a single civilian aircraft. There will simply be drones in Russia's skies on a scale that has to be taken into account. Russian airspace will effectively be closing. The safe days in Russia skies are over." So he was referencing there the increased use of drones in Russian airspace and essentially issuing a dire warning. So Matt, can I start first of all with you? What are your thoughts on the timing of that statement? Why Zelenskyy made that statement when he did and what do you think were his main objectives?
Matt Borie (02:16): Well, thank you for having me, Karen. And this situation is one that Osprey has been monitoring very closely, not just for the last few days or months, but the last several years. Since 2023 in particular, Ukraine has started to conduct drone attacks deeper and deeper into Russian territory. And during these drone attacks, Russia closes airports and portions of its airspace for periods of time as it's conducting civil military deconfliction to deal with the drones with air and air defense activity. Now, this activity has gotten more increased in frequency over the years to the point where in August alone, we had over 900 airport periods of disruption inside of Russian airspace, including airports in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sochi, three of the largest urban centers in the country. Now, Zelenskyy making the statement now is effectively telling the rest of the world what they've been doing for the last couple months in particular, which is systematically disrupting Russian airspace.
(03:28): Now saying Russian airspace is unsafe or that civilian aircraft shouldn't fly in the airspace because of the drone activity and the air defense activity, Zelenskyy hasn't said anything different than what the European Union, for example, has said. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, has a conflict zone information bulletin for Western Russian airspace. It says it's high risk at all altitudes. It recommends operators, obviously EU registered operators, but in general, it recommends not flying in that portion of the airspace due to safety issues. So Zelenskyy hasn't necessarily said anything differently than what other governments, for example, have said, but the timing is meant to apply pressure to Russia publicly. It puts economic focus on the conflict, not just the actual kinetic fighting, but now you have airlines registered in countries throughout the Asia Pacific region, countries in the Middle East and North Africa that still have diplomatic ties with Russia, and now their air carriers are being put in the spotlight as still having flights to Moscow.
(04:31): And so pressure is being applied to these countries to now have to look at what their airlines are doing and then potentially make statements on the topic. The airlines are having to make statements on the topic. And so it's bringing the war in its conflict state to the forefront of the interconnection of air travel between different parts of the world. And that intersection between civil aviation and where conflict zone activity is occurring is one that typically gets plenty of attention, especially in a country like Russia where on Christmas day of 2024, they accidentally shot down a airliner during a Ukrainian drone attack in an incident of misidentification. So Zelenskyy is essentially just highlighting the potential risk that airlines could face if they fly in Russian airspace. Not really a different warning than what, again, European authorities have already said, but it brings the focus back on how is Russia trying to conduct a war while at the same time have economic activity and tourism and trade that is facilitated by air travel.
(05:37): And essentially calling out the airlines, calling out the insurers brings this to the public attention again. It doesn't necessarily highlight activity that's new or different, it's just bringing it back to the forefront.
Karen Walker (05:48): Yeah, that is interesting because essentially what he's saying, it's not like he came and made the statement sort of saying, "It's about to become very dangerous. I'm giving you advanced warning. This has been happening and building for some time." So he's not warning of something to come. He's basically warning of something that's already there and getting to be more of an issue. You've got some numbers, I think, in terms of how the number of drones and drone activity has been increasing there.
Matt Borie (06:23): Yes. So when this started to happen where outside of border provinces, as in how Osprey tracks the data, essentially over 300 kilometers inside of Russian airspace, we consider a deep strike in the conflict. And so we were seeing 20 to 50 attacks in 2023 per month, so maybe one or two a day. In 2024, it went from 50 to 100, so two or three a day. In 2025, we started getting into the hundreds per month and even the thousands per month, so dozens per day. In 2026, we reached over 10,000 in the April timeframe, which we thought at Osprey was kind of a inflection point. That means 10,000 is 300 plus drones per day launched towards areas deep inside Russia. Well, in August it reached almost 17,000, so over 500 drones per day. And since the statement, we did see a small drop because there was a visit to Moscow and Kiev by Trump's negotiators.
(07:41): And so both sides for a three-day period decreased the amount of activity in attacks, not completely halted, but a decrease especially in attacks on each other's capitals. But now that that's over, that has shot right back up. Moscow had drone shootdowns overnight, so we're basically back into the same pattern. The bottom line is, if you look at the data on a graph, I know this is a podcast, just think about a hockey stick, and it's basically a hockey stick. So it started out with a gradual increase, and then in 2026, while it had increased substantially from where it started, it has now gone up into the curb of a hockey stick. And we're at over 500 drones a day being launched into various parts of Russia stretching from, for those that are geography experts, St. Petersburg in the West, Murmansk in the Northwest on the Arctic Circle, all the way to areas like Yekaterinburg in Siberia, 2,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and then down to the Caucasus regions, Sochi and the Black Sea enclaves that Russia has, oil, gas, and other maritime and Navy assets.
(08:57): So this is a wide swath of territory where these drones are being launched. They're doing this to spread out Russian air defense capacity so it can't be masked in any one spot. They're continuing to target Moscow heavily though, to also force Russia to try to protect the capital. And so it's essentially turning into a situation where Ukraine's best defense is a good offense. They face interceptor capacity shortages at home to defend Kiev from Russian drone and missile attacks. Well, if you're launching drones into Russian airspace every night, 500 plus across 2000 kilometers of territory, and Russia has to deconflict from civil aviation, it also needs to deconflict its aircraft and its own drones that it's trying to launch at Ukraine from the Ukrainian activity and its own air defense activity. So this isn't just designed to disrupt Russian airspace or to target locations on the ground in Russia.
(09:53): It is. Those are two of the goals. The other goal is to try to stop Russia from conducting as many attacks in the Ukraine. And to be honest, Ukraine is launching twice the number of drones into Russia in long range strikes than Russia is launching into Ukraine. And I don't think very many people would've thought four years into this conflict that the situation would be Ukraine is launching more drones over 300 kilometers in distance than Russia is and not even more, but by 100% increase compared to the others. So it is a very interesting development in how Ukraine has been able to develop these types of capabilities and the reasons why they've done so have been out of necessity. They haven't been able to master the ability to produce air defense capabilities necessary to shoot down ballistic missiles, but they've adapted and said, "Well, we can overcome some of these limitations by developing our own offensive strike weapons that will inhibit the Russian military's ability to conduct its strike operations in the way that it would want to."
Karen Walker (11:00): Yeah. Really through the use of drones, Ukraine has switched things around and taken the war to Russia as opposed to defending itself from the Russian attacks. These things must be very disruptive to airport operations, yes?
Matt Borie (11:18): So the airports in Moscow, I mean, again, we were seeing in the 23, 24 timeframe, maybe a disruption a month, and it would be a big deal because a Moscow airport was disrupted. In the 25 timeframe, it became multiple times a month. Now it's nearly every day and not just one of the four or two of the four airports in Moscow. We're talking all four airports in Moscow, some of them multiple times a day, typically at night, but now the activity has expanded to really cover a large portion of the 24-hour time clock. And so the disruption in Moscow is being felt by the population in Moscow. The people flying in and out of Moscow are not Western tourists. They're not Americans going on vacation. It's Russian elite flying in and out of the country. The average Russian citizen isn't taking a flight to Southern Turkey or to the Gulf states for a vacation.
(12:25): These are people in Russia with means that are flying in and out of the country, and they're probably doing it for leisure or business, and that's being disrupted by this activity. And so it's one of the things that Ukraine has done to try to bring the war home, so to speak, to the local population. The other is striking targets like Wildberries and Ozon, which are basically the Russian version of Amazon and Walmart. So they're attacking the warehouses, which means Russians aren't getting their toilet paper, they aren't getting their toothpaste, they aren't getting their socks and their t-shirts. The same way that Americans would feel if your Amazon or your other direct deliveries to your house were being disrupted. It brings the war home. They're not just striking those because they have some logistics capacity to support the military. They're also doing it to disrupt the everyday life of Russian citizens.
(13:22): And then also the attacks on Russian oil refineries where they've lost about 40% of their capacity. They've had to start importing refined fuels into Russia. There are shortages of gasoline and other diesel products being reported in Moscow and other main urban centers. And what this means is the average Russian citizen actually has to think about the consequences of the war with Ukraine. I can't go on holiday. I can't go on my business trip the way that I want to. I can't get the deliveries to my house the way that I want. I can't fill my car up with fuel the way that I want. And so these are things that the Ukrainian population has been dealing with since day one of the war. Their airspace is completely closed by their own choice, but for the sake of aviation safety, and there's been a systematic disruption to their way of life in Ukraine.
(14:10): Now, while border areas in Russia have probably felt this for the last several years, you're actually having St. Petersburg, Moscow, Sochi, other larger urban centers in Russia having disruptions that four years ago no one would've thought possible. And it's due to the development of drone capabilities, tactics, and employment by Ukraine.
Karen Walker (14:32): And so as you say, what Ukraine is really doing is hurting Russia and Russian people economically. It's hurting them in their pocket, it's hurting in their everyday lives. And so that's an interesting, again, another turn of events.
Matt Borie (14:50): Exactly. And again, Ukraine is hitting military targets as well, and disrupting airports has a military application to it. Disrupting the airspace does as well. Anything with logistics and supply chain, so the targeting of Wildberries, which is likely supplying certain items to the Russian military has a military application. And obviously they're targeting oil capacity and military ammunition depots and rocket plants, a wide variety of targets that do have military applications, though some of these are also having the knock-on effect, which is the civilian populace. And there's a term called psychological warfare, and this is a form of psychological warfare. So while they may not be killing civilians or killing military personnel with these attacks, when an airport has to close because of drones, there's air raid sirens going off in Moscow, right? The everyday Russian citizen has to deal with something that is difficult to deal with psychologically.
(15:56): There's a psychological impact from missing your holiday, from not getting your order delivered, and it's because of these Ukrainian military actions. And so while what is the impact on loss of lives or the total loss of goods and services, some of that we can quantify, not a lot of loss of life. Impact on goods and services, Russia will say they're withstanding it. Other outside economic reviews will say it's hurting. But at the end of the day, it comes down to hearts and minds a lot of time when it comes to warfare. Is the local populace going to continue to support an operation one way or another? And while Ukraine may not win the war with this psychological operation, so to speak, it does have an influence on the trajectory of the conflict.
Karen Walker (16:42): It makes things a lot more uncomfortable for everybody in Russia. With the Russian airspace issue, ever since this war started, a lot of airlines, some voluntarily, some because of the regulatory authorities or governments, have been avoiding Russian airspace as we know, and then others are not. Have you seen any response? Is it more likely that some of those that are still going through Russian airspace might reroute as a result of that statement?
Matt Borie (17:17): There may be some decrease in the amount of overflights to Russia by Asian carriers that may still be using the polar routes. There may be some reroutes though, where instead of flying from the Gulf States up through the Caucasus region in Kazakhstan, and then from east to west in Russia, that more airlines go through Eastern Europe and then up through the Baltic Sea and that corridor, though it's a longer route. I think what's more likely is you'll see airlines start to limit the number of flights that they have potentially rather than a blanket cancellation. They would probably be reviewing their flights at night because again, that still is where most of the activity's happening. So reducing their risk profile and exposure by limiting flights to certain time periods during the day, I don't think this is going to lead to a blanket change. There are significant pressures on airlines from a routing perspective on what airspace is available to them for these types of international operations.
(18:22): A lot of the airlines that are flying to Russia now aren't bordering Russia, where it's an hour flight from a Eastern European state to a part of Russia. Well, those flights aren't happening. These are flights that are going thousands of kilometers. And so for these types of long flights, there's only certain airspace that they probably can even use to conduct it, especially due to other conflict zone issues. And so the fact that these routes are also generating revenue, positive revenue for these airlines is another reason why I think they'll likely persist in some form or fashion. And there's no real indication that insurers are going to pull coverage because of a statement from Zelenskyy. They may pull coverage because of the activity that's happening, but that activity was happening prior to Zelenskyy's statement. It's going to persist after the statement. Increased cost for insurance is probably going to be a part of the equation, but if you can continue to increase ticket prices because the market demands there from the Russian population that has the means to travel, it will probably mean that you'll continue to see flight operations.
(19:33): Some of these airlines are taking off in the Middle East. And last night there were ballistic missiles shot down over Jordan. I mean, there's aircraft taking off from Jordan and flying to Moscow, right? They were dealing with conflict zone issues the second they took off. They're dealing with conflict zone issues the second they land. And that's been going on for months now, and in certain cases for extended periods of time, even beyond that, depending on where they've been operating to and from. And so I think the airlines understand that there is the risk to their operations. It's not a decision based solely off safety and security. It's based off risk management and then risk acceptance as well as risk transference. So you make the flight as safe and secure as possible. It has a residual risk. How much are you going to accept financially of that risk and how much can you transfer to an insurer?
(20:31): And a lot of the decisions get made based off that, not solely based off does this risk assessment say go or no-go? Most risk assessments say go with X number of mitigations, and the more mitigations there are, the more it costs. And one of the biggest mitigations is from a risk management perspective, insurance. So if you can transfer the risk to someone else, you have mitigated it. It's an uncomfortable topic. We don't want to think about someone flying a flight that's safe or not safe, but it's not as black and white as that, especially with where some of these flights are happening from in the first place. And I'm not saying airlines should cancel their flights. They would go out of business if they canceled all of their flights where there was a conflict zone. There's conflict zones in significant parts of the Middle East right now, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not localized to the border.
(21:24): We're talking 2,000 kilometers plus from the Ukrainian border in all directions. If you said no flights in any of those places all the way down to the Middle East, how would there be connectivity and air traffic? So our advice to operators is have a thorough risk management process, input the right data into that, utilize your own internal expertise and external expertise to support your decision making, have an auditable trail of decision making, engage with your governments, engage with your insurers to help transfer and mitigate as much risk as possible on top of the mitigations you're putting in place yourself, and then have this be a continuous feedback loop because you can't just do a risk assessment in August and then say it's fine in September. The situation's going to change. We've seen that in this conflict. It has evolved tremendously since February of 2022, and operators need to be flexible in their response to those changes or else that rigidity and unwillingness to change the way that they operate despite a changing risk environment is what will lead to the types of negative outcomes that they're trying to avoid.
Karen Walker (22:39): Right. So that really brings me, I guess, to the last question. If we can go into big picture mode here, as you've just referenced, of course, with everything that's happening in the Middle East now with Iran and the US, that's another area where we've seen extensive use of drones. So these drone weapons are now, they're not just a reality, but they're everywhere. People can afford them and they're doing a lot of damage. If you look at the big picture, how much do you see this as something that is just going to be a permanent part of the air transport consideration?
Matt Borie (23:20): I think the biggest thing is there's going to have to be some kind of delineation between spillover from conflict related to drones and how that's dealt with, and then the drone sightings near airports. And right now, I'm not sure that everyone has gotten the full picture that there's a difference between a drone and a drone. There's a drone that spills over from Ukraine into Polish airspace and needs to be dealt with by military forces. A drone being cited near an airport in a part of Italy can't necessarily have the same response, but it does need some kind of response. As we saw with the hybrid warfare activity in Germany at Leipzig Airport, even the small drones can potentially be very catastrophic in their impact if they're not managed appropriately. And so it's not going to be a one size fits all approach. We've been able to do that with counter-terrorism.
(24:24): I know that's a different topic, but take your shoes off, take your laptop out of your bag, put it through the scanner, provide advanced passenger information. You walk through the screening, you get your ID checked four times. You can't do that with a drone. You have something that shows up on a radar or something that was detected, and then you need to follow very specific steps after that to make a positive identification. And then even after a positive identification is made, you need to have steps on how you're going to deal with that situation. We've done all this work on the counter-terrorism side in aviation security to deal with improvised explosive devices, hijacking type situations, other forms of unlawful interference that can take place on an aircraft. And we've shared all this information and we've worked very hard since 9/11 as an industry to, while there are physical things that a passenger can see that go on, there's also coordination behind the scenes that is facilitated to ensure that that threat can be dealt with in the most effective way possible.
(25:36): The difficulty with drones is that it typically involves civil and military coordination in a way that isn't the same from a counter-terrorism perspective in aviation security. And because we deal with this conflict and spillover perspective and even hybrid warfare where you have state actors involved, it puts countries on a collision course in information sharing. We're not dealing with terrorists, so to speak, which everybody can get on board with in general to stop the threat from happening. Now it's, well, what side of the conflict are you on? Are you on Russia's side or are you on NATO side? Are you on Ukraine side? Are you on Belarus side? There's this intermixing of geopolitics with the drone threat that I don't think was there from a counter-terrorism perspective when we dealt with the post-9/11 era. So we need to look at the frameworks that were developed in post-9/11 for information sharing, for threat identification, for mitigation measures, and then come up with a way that we can overcome some of the geopolitical impetus that has negated our ability to handle the drone threat in the same kind of way.
Karen Walker (26:41): Fascinating. In a fairly grim sort of way, it's a whole new world, isn't it? And it's interesting. I mean, here we are at the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and I think you've made some very good points there about there were a lot of things learned from that, of course, but you've got to still keep adapting because everybody's adapting, aren't they?
Matt Borie (27:05): The problem we face right now is there's been three airliners shot down since 2014, and the situations weren't all that different in each case. And my view is if three airliners had been down by explosive devices in generally the same way since 2014, we would have a different approach to what's going on. But again, the biggest issue with the conflict zone piece is these conflicts that we're dealing with, they're state versus state, right? This is not Iraq and Afghanistan in the global war on terrorism, and you have a defined enemy that's a terrorist group recognized by the United Nations. You have individual states and these conflicts are cross-border. And Russia-Ukraine isn't just affecting Russia, Ukraine. It's spillover into Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, right? It's Georgia. It's a conflict in the Middle East where you have how many countries in airspaces are being affected, and they all are supposed to share information with each other on how this is happening.
(28:15): Iran's not going to share information about when it's going to launch missiles and drones with Jordan, and there's three airspaces in between, hypothetically, depending on the way the missiles or drones were launched. They're not telling Saudi Arabia, "Oh, by the way, we're going to launch some missiles at Jordan and they might go through your airspace." That's what's supposed to happen technically, but we all know it's not. And so this type of conventional conflict makes the collaboration required to avoid a catastrophic event like the shootdown of an airliner, much more difficult in a way that wasn't necessarily the case in a post-9/11 world where information sharing on counter-terrorism was everybody's job and kind of understood that this is what we're going to do to keep air travel safe and secure. There was a much more collaborative approach to that. I'm not saying it was perfect, but the collaboration this time, it's happening, but it's happening in silos where there's still this kind of good guy, bad guy, and overcoming that is hard because of the geopolitics.
Karen Walker (29:13): A lot of food for thought there, Matt. Thank you so much for joining us again, and thank you for your expert insights into this. I hope you'll join us again. I'm sure the issues are not going to go away, so keep coming back.
Matt Borie (29:27): Hopefully peace has been achieved in one or many of these conflicts, and we'll talk about how to open back up in an airspace that's coming out of a conflict zone environment rather than discussing some of the impacts inside.
Karen Walker (29:42): Thank you. And also a thank you to our producers, Cory Hitt and Natalia Pelayo, and of course, a huge thank you to you, our listeners. Make sure you don't miss us by subscribing to Window Seat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. This is Karen Walker disembarking from Window Seat.
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