A consortium of four companies spanning Sweden, Spain, Poland, and France announced October 22 that Poland has a nationwide drone detection architecture built on the country’s existing commercial mobile network rather than purpose-deployed radar. The system detected and classified non-cooperative drones during NATO’s largest annual interoperability exercise in June, giving it an institutional track record no European peer in the commercial-5G-as-sensing-mesh space can yet match.
The architecture pairs Ericsson’s Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) technology — which causes 5G radios to detect drones using the reflections of their own transmitted signals — with Asseco Poland’s PUSZCZYK acoustic sensor platform, routes all detection data over Play’s 5G backbone, and mounts on Cellnex Poland’s approximately 18,000 passive infrastructure tower sites. None of those sites were built or procured for defense.
The consortium demonstrated the integrated system on October 15 at Ericsson’s R&D Center in Kraków before representatives of Poland’s Parliamentary Committee on Digitalization, the Military University of Technology (WAT), the Swedish Embassy, Poland’s telecommunications regulator UKE, and officials from ORLEN and the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency. The system is designed to produce a real-time common airspace picture across Poland’s approximately 120,000 square miles (312,000 square kilometers) — a coverage area that purpose-deployed radar would require a separate capital program to achieve. Instead, the sensing envelope grows as a passive consequence of commercial investment: every new Play base station or Cellnex tower built for ordinary mobile capacity also extends detection range.
How 5G Signals Already Blanketing Poland Detect Uncooperative Drones
Conventional radar requires a dedicated emitter — a purpose-built transmitter that sends an interrogation signal and listens for what bounces back. ISAC requires no such emitter. It repurposes the OFDM signals a 5G radio transmits continuously for normal voice and data service as the illumination source for a distributed 5G sensing system.
Massive MIMO is the enabling hardware: a multi-antenna radio architecture standardized in 3GPP Release 15 in 2018. Massive MIMO units carry 64 or more antenna elements and form highly directional three-dimensional beams toward connected devices. Thomas Marzetta of Bell Labs first formalized the theoretical foundations of Massive MIMO in 2010, demonstrating that large antenna arrays operating in the same spectral band could serve many users simultaneously through spatial multiplexing. Those same arrays resolve angular differences of approximately 5 to 8 degrees in three-dimensional space.
A drone not registered on the cellular network is invisible to network monitoring but not to the radio environment. When a 5G OFDM signal strikes a drone’s fuselage or rotating propellers, it scatters. Propeller rotation at motor speeds produces micro-Doppler frequency modulation at roughly 100 to 300 Hz—a signature physically distinct from the reflections produced by birds, balloons, or commercial aircraft. ISAC’s signal processing algorithms extract these signatures from the radio’s own receive channel without any cooperation from the drone or its operator.
Deploying multiple synchronized base stations in a multi-static configuration — where each site acts as both transmitter and receiver and the sites cooperate to resolve a target’s position — achieves positioning accuracy below 100 meters. In a live demonstration with AT&T outside a major NFL stadium in Arlington, Texas, Ericsson’s multi-static ISAC configuration tracked multiple drones simultaneously at altitudes of 300 to 400 feet, producing real-time speed, location, and elevation data with AI-generated object classification confidence scores.
Play, Poland’s largest mobile operator by network scale, routes all ISAC detection data from Ericsson’s radios to the processing layer over its 5G backbone. Play operates more than 13,500 base stations and reaches nearly 100 percent of Poland’s population with mobile coverage; its fiber-optic infrastructure serves more than 11 million households. Play CTO Michał Ziółkowski described the shift in how Poland’s government should regard commercial network infrastructure: “Today, a modern telecommunications network is far more than a communication tool. It is a strategic and critical infrastructure asset that serves as a foundation for economic growth, digital transformation and, crucially, the security of the state and its citizens.”
PUSZCZYK Platform Deploys Acoustic Sensors on Streetlight Infrastructure
While ISAC provides broad-area radio detection, Asseco Poland’s PUSZCZYK platform adds a complementary ground-level acoustic layer that can distinguish between drone types and between drones and wildlife — including birds, lawn mowers, and delivery scooters.
PUSZCZYK — the Polish name for the Ural owl — deploys hardware built on Codequest and DGT ZVOOK acoustic sensors mounted on street lighting infrastructure already present across urban and suburban Poland. Those mounting points were chosen because streetlights carry dedicated power supply connections that require no additional procurement to exploit.
The sensors capture motor sound signatures. Asseco’s IoT data pipeline routes the captured audio through AI classification algorithms that identify not just drone presence but drone type — distinguishing between specific UAV models and filtering out false positives caused by ambient noise sources. The system reports each identified object’s speed, altitude, and real-time flight route.
All detection streams — ISAC radio signatures and PUSZCZYK acoustic signatures — merge on PUSZCZYK’s command interface, which renders a live operational picture on both two-dimensional and three-dimensional maps. Designated no-fly zones can be configured to trigger automated alerts when any detected object enters restricted airspace. Grzegorz Bartler, Vice President of Asseco Poland, stated at the Kraków demonstration: “With a powerful combination of technologies and detection methods integrated into our PUSZCZYK platform, we can gather a rich set of data to see what is happening in our airspace. This is crucial for protecting sensitive areas and critical infrastructure.”
Cellnex Poland, the country’s largest independent tower company, provides the physical masts hosting ISAC radios. With approximately 18,000 passive infrastructure sites across Poland, Cellnex brings an existing security footprint to the consortium: the company already holds infrastructure relationships with Poland’s national police, State Fire Service, Border Guard, and road network operators. Jacek Niewęgłowski, Cellnex Poland’s Director for Transformation and External Affairs, cited the scalability advantage of building on passive infrastructure already dotted across the national territory — sites that operators and state entities already maintain.
NATO Exercise Bydgoszcz Validated System Against Alliance Command-and-Control Architectures
The Kraków demonstration was not the system’s first operational test. According to consortium sources, the integrated platform was deployed at NATO’s Coalition Warrior Interoperability eXploration, eXperimentation, eXamination Exercise (CWIX) 2026 at the NATO Joint Force Training Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland, from June 8 to June 26.
CWIX 2026 was the largest edition of NATO’s annual interoperability exercise on record, drawing personnel from 46 nations and subjecting more than 500 digital systems to more than 40,000 individual tests across command-and-control, communications, and multi-domain operations scenarios. Testing the sensing mesh within that framework meant assessing it not in isolation but against allied command-and-control architectures — a prerequisite for any system that might eventually need to share airspace data with NATO partners along Poland’s eastern frontier.
CWIX 2026 placed particular emphasis on integrating Ukrainian battlefield experience into alliance doctrine, with drone operations and counter-drone techniques explicitly highlighted as areas where operational lessons from Ukraine were being fed into NATO war-gaming and training frameworks.
Ericsson also announced a signed Letter of Intent with WAT — the Military University of Technology in Warsaw — to advance research collaboration on sensing and defense applications.
Poland’s Eastern Border Calculus Makes Detection at Scale Urgent
The system’s development is inseparable from Poland’s security environment. Poland shares a long border with Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and has confronted the operational consequences of drone incursions from the east directly.
In September 2025, a wave of 19 to 23 Russian Gerbera drones triggered a NATO Article 4 consultation and forced the temporary closure of four Polish civilian airports. Poland’s SkyCTRL drone monitoring system was offline at the time because of an ongoing modernization program, leaving a detection gap that defense analysts later cited as a planning priority.
In January 2026, Prime Minister Donald Tusk signed a separate contract valued at approximately PLN 15 billion (approximately $4.0 billion USD) with a Kongsberg-led consortium for the San counter-UAS system — a long-range architecture targeting Poland’s eastern border with kinetic and electronic countermeasure effectors.
The Ericsson-Cellnex-Asseco-Play architecture occupies a structurally different role. San is a defense-acquisition system oriented toward kinetic response at the frontier; the consortium’s architecture is a detection and tracking layer — a nationwide common airspace picture that operates at a geographic scale no point-defense system can replicate. Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk described the national intent as building counter-drone capability in distinct layers, with Poland moving quickly rather than waiting for European-level drone shield initiatives to mature.
Poland’s counter-UAS systems market was estimated at approximately $63.6 million in 2025 and is projected to reach $212 million by 2030, at a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent — a pace that significantly outstrips global averages. Poland’s broader anti-drone market is forecast to expand at roughly 29 percent CAGR over the same period.
Commercial Telecom as Defense Asset: Governance Gap Follows Sensing Mesh
Martin Mellor, Head of Ericsson Poland, described the system as a new model for national infrastructure protection at scale: “Together with Asseco and using Play’s mobile network for the backhaul, we can create an advanced, situational awareness platform for drone detection and tracking. We are proud to work together to show how this can look in real life, protecting critical infrastructure in Poland.”
The word “model” carries specific weight here. The consortium’s architecture requires no dedicated infrastructure procurement, no greenfield radio network deployment, and no new tower construction for sensing nodes. The masts, backhaul, and streetlight poles hosting PUSZCZYK’s acoustic sensors already exist and are maintained by their commercial operators to carrier-grade standards. A parallel radar grid covering Poland’s approximately 120,000 square miles (312,000 square kilometers) would require a capital program no NATO eastern-flank member can absorb without displacing other priorities.
The scaling properties are structurally unusual: every new Play base station or Cellnex tower built for ordinary commercial purposes — to improve network coverage, to add 5G capacity — also extends the potential sensing envelope without any corresponding defense-procurement line item. That dynamic may be among the most significant things the consortium is demonstrating to NATO’s other eastern members: not merely a technical capability, but a model for converting national commercial telecommunications infrastructure into a dual-use defense asset without a separate capital program.
That model, however, creates a governance gap that prior deployments of this class have not faced at national scale. Sensing infrastructure owned by private commercial operators, running on spectrum licensed for commercial use — UKE granted spectral authorization using industrial spectrum distinct from standard commercial allocations specifically for the October 15 demonstration — sits outside the procurement rules and oversight frameworks that govern dedicated military systems. How ongoing operations will be governed, what regulatory access rights apply, and what transparency obligations attach to a commercially owned national sensing mesh are questions the 2027 pilot phase will be expected to begin answering.
ISAC From Stadium Demo to 6G Standard: Ericsson’s Deployment Roadmap
The Poland system represents Ericsson’s most geopolitically significant ISAC deployment to date, but not its first. Earlier in 2026, Ericsson and Finnish critical communications operator Erillisverkot conducted an ISAC drone detection trial at Vuosaari Harbor in Helsinki, validating the technology in a dense port environment with substantial radio interference and multipath effects.
Ericsson positions ISAC as a bridging capability between 5G Advanced and 6G, where sensing and communication are expected to merge more fully at the standards level. Current deployments are concentrated in defense and public safety applications precisely because those customers can justify current performance levels and are prepared to pay a premium for capability ahead of mass-market pricing. Broader commercial applications — logistics coordination, urban air mobility integration, aviation deconfliction — are anticipated once 6G standardization progresses through 3GPP.
Pilot operations with strategic partners are planned for 2027. The consortium has not specified which sites or institutions will participate, though the audience assembled in Kraków — spanning air navigation, critical energy infrastructure, military, and border security institutions — identifies the priority sectors under evaluation. What the Poland demonstration adds that stadium and harbor trials could not is geopolitical scale and institutional validation: a system assessed within NATO’s interoperability testing framework, authorized by a national spectrum regulator actively engaged in its development, and presented to the full range of state stakeholders who would need to operate it. That is not the same category as a controlled trial outside a sports venue. It is a system with a deployment pipeline.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How does a 5G network detect drones if the drones are not connected to the network?
A drone does not need to be connected to the network to be detected using ISAC. Every 5G radio continuously transmits OFDM signals for normal communication. When those signals encounter a physical object — including a drone — some of the signal energy scatters back toward the transmitting antenna array. ISAC’s signal processing algorithms analyze that returning energy. Rotating propeller blades introduce a characteristic micro-Doppler frequency modulation at roughly 100 to 300 Hz that is physically distinct from the return signatures of birds, aircraft, and other objects. The algorithms identify that signature, extract position and velocity information, and generate a tracking output — all without the drone or its operator doing anything. The drone is physically present in the radio environment, and that presence is sufficient for detection.
Does repurposing commercial 5G towers for nationwide airspace sensing raise privacy concerns for ordinary users?
The sensing mechanism operates on radio-frequency energy scattered off physical objects in the environment, not on the content of calls, messages, or data transmitted by connected devices. ISAC does not intercept communications. The system does, however, create a structural governance question that prior deployments of this class have not resolved at national scale: commercial sensing infrastructure, operated by private companies under commercial licensing terms, serving national security functions sits outside the oversight frameworks that govern dedicated military surveillance systems. Poland’s UKE licensed specific industrial spectrum — distinct from commercial allocations — for the October 15 demonstration, signaling early regulatory engagement with this question. How ongoing operations will be governed, what access rights apply to the detection data, and what transparency obligations attach to a privately owned national sensing mesh remain open questions as Poland moves toward its planned 2027 pilot phase.
What is ISAC and how close is it to commercial-scale deployment?
ISAC — Integrated Sensing and Communication — is a 5G capability that uses the same radio hardware a base station deploys for data transmission to simultaneously sense the physical environment. 3GPP Release 18 (5G Advanced) addresses it at the study and work-item stage, and it is expected to be integrated more fully into 6G specifications in the next standardization cycle. Current deployments are targeted at defense, public safety, and critical infrastructure customers, where operational requirements justify early adoption. Broader commercial-scale availability — in logistics, urban air mobility, and general infrastructure monitoring — is anticipated once 6G standardization matures, likely in the early 2030s. Ericsson’s Poland consortium represents the most geographically extensive and institutionally validated ISAC deployment to date.
How does this sensing mesh fit alongside Poland’s other anti-drone investments, including the San system?
San and the consortium’s ISAC-based architecture are complementary rather than competing. San, the approximately PLN 15 billion (~$4.0 billion USD) Kongsberg-led acquisition signed in January 2026, provides kinetic and electronic effectors — systems that can neutralize a drone once its position is known. The Ericsson-Cellnex-Asseco-Play architecture is a detection and tracking layer: it generates the common airspace picture that tells effector systems where to look. Detection at scale is the missing enabler for kinetic systems, which are expensive per engagement and operationally limited in coverage. A nationwide sensing mesh that identifies a drone at long range and hands a real-time tracking solution to a point-defense system is precisely the architecture Poland’s layered counter-drone strategy requires — and it is what the consortium’s system is designed to provide.
