French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that the CIA never warned France of a Russian plan to launch explosive drones from merchant ships in the Mediterranean. Italy’s defense minister, Guido Crosetto, had dismissed the same report earlier in the day.
Spanish daily El Mundo reported Wednesday that US intelligence told Spain, France and Italy that one of them could be hit by small Gerbera attack drones, hidden in shipping containers and catapulted from international waters. Spain, the third government named, had not commented publicly by Thursday evening in Madrid, and no statement from its defense or foreign ministries appeared in Spanish coverage of the report.
The launch method in the report has been seen before, off Sweden in February.
El Mundo Ties the Warning to Ratcliffe’s Moscow Trip
El Mundo reporter Xavier Colás wrote that European foreign ministries received a CIA report shortly after CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s August 25 visit to Moscow. El Mundo’s sources for the warning are anonymous, led by a person close to Lithuania’s defense ministry who supplied the drone details.
The trip is on the record. CBS News reported that Ratcliffe used it to warn Moscow against attacking NATO members, and the Kremlin said he met Russian intelligence officials rather than Vladimir Putin. The CIA report El Mundo describes has not been published.
The Lithuanian source named the aircraft: the Gerbera, a plywood-and-foam drone roughly 6.5 feet (2 meters) long with an 8.2-foot (2.5-meter) wingspan. It weighs up to 40 pounds (18 kilograms), cruises near 99 mph (160 km/h) and has a stated range of 373 miles (600 kilometers), matching the wingspan, weight, speed and range Ukrainian intelligence gave when DroneXL profiled the Gerbera last September. “It is not difficult at all,” the source said of hiding them in a ship’s container.
Launched 124 to 186 miles (200 to 300 kilometers) offshore, a Gerbera would reach the coast in about one and a quarter to two hours, by El Mundo’s math. Its 9- to 11-pound (4- to 5-kilogram) warhead is too small to destroy a large facility, so the paper’s scenario has it temporarily shutting an airport or port, or starting a fire. El Mundo also points to politics: all three countries hold elections in 2027.
Macron Denies the CIA Alert but Calls a Russian Attack Plausible
In the same France 2 and TF1 interview where he said “the CIA did not inform France of this information,” Macron called a Russian attack on Europe plausible. France has not faced a comparable attack yet, he said, but one could happen.
Crosetto wrote on X that the alarm raised by the Spanish paper “serves no one and is not confirmed,” according to ANSA, and that nobody needs more fuel on the fire. Italian officials told ANSA the alert never arrived through intelligence, diplomatic, military or operational channels, Gazzetta del Sud reported.
France is preparing for drone attacks anyway. In the interview Macron pointed to the explosive drone found at Leipzig/Halle Airport on August 4, an attack Germany formally blamed on Russia this month. On September 18 he ordered a plan to protect critical infrastructure and sensitive defense-industry sites from drone and cyberattacks.
Russia Has Already Flown a Drone Off a Ship Near a NATO Port
The February case off Sweden is the closest thing to El Mundo’s scenario on the record. A Swedish Navy vessel saw a drone take off from the Russian signals-intelligence ship Zhigulevsk in the Öresund and jammed it as it neared the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, docked at Malmö.
The Kremlin called Sweden’s account absurd, USNI News reported, and neither Swedish nor French officials identified the drone’s type in their public statements. In July, DroneXL reported that it was the only case in the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ 144-incident dataset with an observed launch from a named Russian vessel. The rest of that report leans on proximity: a shadow-fleet ship sailing near a sighting.
The Gerbera itself has turned up armed at sea. Polish troops pulled a Gerbera 2 from the Baltic off Rusinowo on September 14, and military prosecutors said it carried a live fragmentation warhead. As of September 16, investigators had not established where it launched, and one explanation Polish officials offered was a drift in from international waters.
DroneXL’s Take
When the IISS dataset came out in July, I wrote that a confirmed maritime launch looks like Malmö: a named ship, an observed launch, a military response and a minister on the record. A warning about an attack that hasn’t happened can’t meet that bar.
It still needs sourcing a reader can weigh. This one has anonymous sources, a CIA report that hasn’t been published, and two governments on record denying it.
Governments deny intelligence exchanges all the time, and Macron called a Russian attack plausible in the same breath. The capability was never the question. Leipzig and the armed Gerbera off Rusinowo settled that.
A warning that names the drone and the launch distance is a far more specific claim than a general statement that Russia can do this, and it needs sourcing to match. A leaked alert that draws two government denials within a day makes the next warning easier to wave off. Crosetto is right about the fuel. The better answer is for the three governments to say what their navies and air defenses are watching for in the Mediterranean, because a Gerbera in a shipping container is a real threat whether or not this warning ever reached them.
Sources: El Mundo, Euronews, ANSA, Gazzetta del Sud, CBS News, NBC News, USNI News
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
