Tag Archives: defence policy

Malta’s Drone Blindspot: Neutrality Is Not a Defence Strategy

Malta is still treating drones as if they’re a future problem, when the rest of Europe has already moved on. Airports abroad are being disrupted, energy sites probed, borders tested — and the EU has responded with detection grids, counter‑UAV doctrine, and rapid‑response layers. Meanwhile, we’re still arguing about neutrality as if a hostile drone will stop mid‑air to read our Constitution.

We have one airport, one main port, one power station, a few desalination plants, and a handful of subsea cables. A single drone incident in any of these would hit the whole country. That’s not drama; it’s maths.

Neutrality never meant refusing sensors, refusing training, or refusing the ability to detect a threat before it’s overhead. It meant staying out of alliances — not staying blind.

Europe adapted. The threat arrived. We’re the only ones still standing still.
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A new patrol boat stuck on the slipway says more about us than about steel

A €50 million patrol boat has sat grounded for a year — and that says more about how we buy and sustain capability than about the steel itself.

A brand-new patrol vessel bought to protect our waters remains unusable after a year ashore. The story points to failures in handover testing, spare parts and logistics, and training, and it asks who is accountable for turning expensive hardware into real, day-one capability.

€50M patrol boat grounded for a year, with faults, poor sustainment planning and training delays leaving a costly asset idle and patrol coverage reduced. Continue reading

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