The Île Longue naval base in Brittany, France, dwelling to the French Navy’s 4 ballistic missile submarines, was overflown by as many as 5 small drones on Dec. 4, 2025.
French information organisations Le Monde and Agence France-Presse (AFP) have mentioned an investigation has been launched by authorities following the incursion into extremely restricted and delicate airspace. Commander Guillaume Le Rasle of the French Navy informed AFP that the delicate infrastructure on the base “was not threatened”. Although he mentioned it was too early to find out the origin of the drones, he believes the intent was to “alarm the general public”.
The drones have been detected round 7:30pm on Thursday, Dec. 4. Safety forces at Île Longue engaged the drones, although it’s unconfirmed whether or not any have been introduced down both by kinetic weapons or newer digital C-UAS (counter-unmanned aerial programs) know-how. Major safety on the base is carried out by the maritime department of the French Nationwide Gendarmerie.
Île Longue, situated in northwestern France – simply throughout the water from the port of Brest – is a peninsula utilized in its entirety by the naval base of the identical title. As the bottom was constructed, the peninsula really grew in dimension by round 0.3 sq. kilometres utilizing reclaimed land. It’s the homeport for all 4 of France’s Triomphant class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), which might every carry as many as 16 M51 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) armed with a number of thermonuclear warheads. Île Longue contains storage services for these missiles in addition to the warheads they’re designed to hold, making the peninsula a extremely defendable self-contained fortress.
An M51 SLBM ready to be loaded onto a French Triomphant-class (S-616) SLBMdon’t drop it guys. pic.twitter.com/XHyW2ePJbS
— Tom Antonov (@Tom_Antonov) November 22, 2024
As at the very least one French SSBN is all the time maintained at sea with a war-ready load of missiles and warheads, the overflights by these drones didn’t pose a direct menace to the continued nuclear deterrent, nevertheless as we’ve got seen within the Russia-Ukraine battle even small drones with explosive prices can be utilized to devastating impact towards mounted infrastructure or stationary automobiles. This has made defending delicate areas, like this naval base, from drone incursions extra essential than ever. It’s unattainable to know when some of these drones would cease performing as merely a nuisance and as a substitute grow to be a direct, lethal menace.
Drone Risk
Nations throughout Europe have reported an growing variety of detected incursions into delicate or in any other case restricted airspace, like over airports, over the previous yr. Most notably, Polish airspace was breached by Russian drones in September, a lot of which have been shot down by fighter plane. After incursions over Copenhagen Airport, Aalborg Airport, and Billund Airport later in the identical month, Danish authorities mentioned they believed a ‘skilled actor’ was guilty.
Final yr, we reported extensively on reported sightings of unauthorised UAVs which have been plaguing U.S. navy websites within the UK. On the time, it was advised that the harassment by drones might have been linked to a call to permit lengthy vary missile strikes by Ukraine deep into Russian territory. F-15E Strike Eagles from RAF Lakenheath have been launched, alongside a UK police helicopter and a few Royal Air Power property, in an try to surveil the suspected drones and direct safety providers on the bottom in direction of potential operators.
Regardless of the massive response, over the next days much more U.S. navy websites have been reporting drone sightings and particular airspace restrictions have been quickly launched to forbid unauthorised UAV flights inside sure radii of those installations. In October 2025, simply shy of a yr after these occurrences, Secretary of State for Defence John Healey introduced that new powers can be launched granting navy forces within the UK to have interaction drones that threatened the safety of restricted websites.
From the Sea?
Although not all reported drone incursions over Europe have been over coastal areas – in reality France itself has famous potential sightings over inland websites beforehand – the very fact many have been close to the ocean, and, significantly, close to to busy delivery routes, has raised the query whether or not civilian vessels could also be getting used as clandestine drone motherships.
French forces boarded the Boracay, a tanker travelling from St Petersburg, Russia, to Vadinar, India because it rounded the Brittany coast – close to Île Longue – on Sept. 28 to analyze suspicions that it was concerned in launching or in any other case working the drones which breached the airspace of Danish airports just below every week earlier. Previously often called the Pushpa, the ship has lengthy been listed as a part of Russia’s sanction-evading ‘shadow fleet’. No affirmation has been made by French authorities as as to whether tools that could possibly be linked to drone operations was discovered on board the ship, although its captain is because of face a trial in a French court docket in February 2026 for failing to cooperate with authorities.
Taking a stand towards growing Russian provocation of NATO…
🇫🇷@MarineNationale have stopped and boarded MV Boracay, a 🇷🇺Russian ‘shadow ft’ oil tanker off coast of St Nazaire.
Not less than two of the crew have been detained by the French – the ship is suspected of launching… pic.twitter.com/Wi0lN6jf88
— Navy Lookout (@NavyLookout) October 2, 2025
Brest, and the Île Longue base, sit simply to the east of the Ouessant (or Off Ushant) visitors separation scheme (TSS), which handles the vast majority of delivery visitors heading into or out of the English Channel’s western edge. The English Channel is the busiest delivery lane on the earth, with over 500 every day business delivery transits. Hiding amongst these – primarily in plain sight – can be the proper cowl for launching secret drone operations. By the point the required property could possibly be in place to establish the potential origin web site of any drones, the ship they launched from might have hidden all associated tools and traveled miles to be in a totally totally different location.
Utilizing Sentinel-1 radar imagery to make out the shapes of our altering seaborne power system
e.g. the busy English Channel, the place delivery lanes are clearly seen. pic.twitter.com/p8OQgNilcc
— shaun.trennery.com (@shauntrennery) March 7, 2024
Policing such actions, then, turns into a world endeavor – very like the French seizure of a ship associated to suspected actions in Denmark.
Actual findings of investigations launched into suspected drone incursions are sometimes solely launched to the general public in redacted kind – safety forces, understandably, not desirous to reveal the techniques, tools, or guidelines of engagement used throughout C-UAS operations or the intelligence capabilities that inform them or the investigations after the very fact. Nonetheless, with these occurrences changing into an increasing number of frequent it’s changing into harder for governments to justify their traditional responses of instituting new, unspecified safety measures. As a substitute, many demand that agency, public motion be taken towards invading drones in addition to those that function them.
