EU Counter-Drone Action Plan: what really changes (and the new 100-gram threshold)

Why this plan, and why now?

The trigger is well known: the surge of unidentified drone reports over European airports and military bases in autumn 2025 exposed two major weaknesses — the lack of systematic verification and the fragmentation of capabilities across Member States.

The Commission therefore no longer reasons purely in aviation terms, but in homeland security and civil defence terms. This is a meaningful political shift that brings the drone topic closer to the concerns of critical infrastructure operators.

Ten measures to structure a European response

The plan stacks a series of measures; the most important ones lay the foundations of a real European C-UAS ecosystem.

1. Identify and support "civil-military" industrial players able to deliver counter-drone tools, with investment facilitation.
2. Create an EU centre of excellence for counter-drones to pool doctrine and lessons learned.
3. Set up a certification scheme for counter-drone systems — a long-awaited point for public buyers and critical infrastructure operators.
4. Launch the D-TECT industrial forum (Drone TEch for Countering Threats) in Q2 2026.
5. Create an "EU Trusted Drone" label in Q4 2026, with a coordinated supply-chain risk assessment.
6. Exploit 5G and future 6G networks for detection: catch cellular-connected drones and turn 5G stations into opportunistic radars through Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC).
7. Stand up multi-State drone rapid-reaction teams by Q4 2026.
8. Set up an annual large-scale European counter-drone exercise to test cross-border cooperation.
9. Study a unified European platform for drone incident reporting, accessible to national authorities.
10. Accelerate the work on digital definition and publication of zones where drone operations are restricted (regulatory geography).

The 100 g turning point: the real operational change

Beyond the industrial measures, the plan carries a part that will impact every operator across Europe: a new mass threshold at 100 g for several key obligations.

Today, operator registration and Direct Remote ID are required respectively for drones above 250 g (or fitted with a camera) and for drones in classes C1, C2, C3, C5 and C6. The Commission proposes to lower these thresholds to 100 g by Q3 2026.

Concretely, the measures considered are:

• Mandatory registration of every operator of drones above 100 g.
• Extending Direct Remote ID to every drone above 100 g.
• Banning take-off without prior entry of an operator identification number.
• Extending geo-awareness requirements to every drone above 100 g.
• Studying, with a 2027 horizon, the technical conditions of a generalised geo-fencing capability to prevent unintentional entry into sensitive zones.

Why the 100 g threshold is a game changer for detection

For cooperative-detection players — therefore for DECTYR — this is excellent news. Extending Direct Remote ID to drones above 100 g means that a major share of the consumer drones that today fly "under the cooperative radar" (mini drones, light FPV, some DJI Mini for instance) will ultimately have to broadcast a standard EN 4709-002 frame.

For sensitive sites, this mechanically reinforces the value of passive RF detection: more drones unambiguously identifiable, more events documentable with a court-ready evidence chain, and a better-structured RF environment to tell lawful overflights from problematic ones.

The DECTYR RX-5 is natively aligned with this trajectory: it already captures the five Remote ID frameworks (EU EN 4709-002, USA ASTM F3411-22a, French signalement, JANS 0401 Japan, B-RID Singapore) and will automatically benefit from the broader cooperative perimeter.

Our take on the limits of the plan

Not all measures are equally relevant. Supporting the production of counter-drone tools, integrating emerging technologies such as ISAC, and certifying C-UAS systems all go in the right direction.

Stacking constraints on already-compliant operators, however, seems structurally unbalanced: an intentionally malicious pilot will never register as a UAS operator, will not put their operator ID on the airframe, and will use modified drones. For the measures to truly bite, every drone of 100 g and above would need to be subject to an effective Direct Remote ID, geo-awareness and possibly geo-fencing obligation — including models placed on the market before 2024 and privately-built drones.

It is technically difficult, sometimes impossible, to retrofit those earlier aircraft. Either they are exempted (and the measures lose effectiveness), or they are banned from flight (with a non-trivial political effect on the pilot community). The precise schedule and the implementing acts will tell how far the Commission goes.

Our reading for security managers

For a security director or a detection-solution buyer, the message is clear:

1. The European trajectory points to an extended cooperative coverage. Investing today in passive Remote ID detection means aligning with the 2026-2027 doctrine — which the DECTYR RX-5 does natively.

2. The European C-UAS certification and the "EU Trusted Drone" label will become market references. French and European manufacturers with a controlled supply chain are better positioned to comply.

3. Interdiction capabilities (jamming, spoofing, kinetic) remain reserved to State actors. The role of private sites stays: detect, document, escalate. The quality of the evidence chain (timestamp, trajectory, Remote ID, signed PDF report) will be increasingly decisive.

4. Critical-infrastructure operators must now integrate into their continuity plans scenarios similar to those observed in Denmark: repeated overflights, possible swarms, non-cooperative drones. The complementarity of RF + radar + EO/IR under hypervision (the DECTYR Hub model) makes its full sense here.

In short

The 11 February 2026 European action plan is less a regulatory text than a political orientation. It outlines for 2026-2027 a framework where cooperative detection is broadened (100 g threshold), where the C-UAS industry is certified (EU label), and where cross-border cooperation is structured (centre of excellence, annual exercises).

For French and European sensitive-site operators, the signal is clear: do not wait until 2027 to handle the drone topic, and pick solutions aligned with the European trajectory — sovereign, compliant across all Remote ID standards, and built to evolve.