Firing Russian lasers at British aircraft

Today's revelation that Russian forces have used lasers against British pilots near UK waters forces London and her NATO allies to confront an uncomfortable question: when does grey-zone harassment of allied forces shade into an “armed attack” that could, in principle, engage Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty?

This episode combines several contemporary anxieties at once: Russian probing of undersea infrastructure, deliberate targeting of aircrews, and the legal ambiguity surrounding non-kinetic attacks. It is therefore worth setting out both the facts as they are presently known and the legal-strategic framework within which the United Kingdom and NATO will respond.

What appears to have happened

According to statements by Defence Secretary John Healey and multiple media reports, the Russian intelligence-gathering ship Yantar has been operating close to British waters to the north of Scotland. RAF aircraft and Royal Navy units were tasked to monitor the vessel. During these surveillance flights, lasers were directed from the Russian ship at British pilots, apparently with the intention of dazzling or disorienting them rather than destroying their aircraft. 

Healey has characterised the behaviour as “deeply dangerous” and stated that Britain has adjusted her naval rules of engagement and prepared “military options” in case the vessel threatens UK interests, in particular critical undersea cables and other seabed infrastructure. 

The Yantar is not an ordinary surface combatant. She is associated with Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research and is equipped with submersibles suited for cable tapping or sabotage on the seabed. Western navies have tracked her near undersea infrastructure before, including in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea. 

This latest laser incident also takes place against a wider pattern of Russian naval activity in and around British waters in 2025, including several recent episodes in which Royal Navy ships and Wildcat helicopters, sometimes under direct NATO operational control, have shadowed Russian destroyers transiting the North Sea and English Channel. 

The question is not whether the Russian actions are unfriendly; they plainly are. The question is whether they are legally an “armed attack” upon the United Kingdom or another NATO ally within the meaning of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, or something less than that.

Lasers at aircrews: legal and operational characterisation

Directing lasers at pilots is not a new tactic. Chinese forces have been accused of similar conduct against US and Australian aircraft in the Pacific. The legal assessment tends to turn on three points: the weapon’s characteristics, its effects, and the operational context.

1. Weapon type

   
   

   The Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (Protocol IV to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) prohibits weapons specifically designed to cause permanent blindness to the naked eye. Both the United Kingdom and Russia are parties. However, low-power “dazzlers” intended for temporary disorientation or sensor interference fall into a grey area. They are not per se prohibited, although their use can still be unlawful if it is possible that they will cause blindness or death in any particular case.

   
   

2. Effects upon the pilots and aircraft

   
   

   If the lasers cause temporary glare or discomfort but do not inflict permanent injury or damage aircraft systems, many public international lawyers would characterise the conduct as harassment or a dangerous interference with aviation, rather than an armed attack. Should permanent eye injuries or serious accidents result, the legal characterisation might change considerably.

   
   

3. Peacetime aviation and maritime law

   
   

   Even below the threshold of “use of force” in the sense of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, there are obligations to ensure the safety of civil aviation and navigation. Deliberately interfering with aircraft operating lawfully in international airspace or within a coastal state’s airspace may be contrary to those duties.

On the facts so far reported, the lasers used by Yantar seem to have been sophisticated enough to trouble pilots, but not of the sort that would be classed as military-grade energy weapons designed to destroy or disable aircraft outright. 

In operational terms, this is classic grey-zone behaviour: dangerous and escalatory, but calibrated so that Moscow can argue it is merely “defensive” signalling against what Russia will describe as provocative allied surveillance.

The Article 5 framework: what counts as an “armed attack”?

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty provides that an armed attack against one or more allies in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, and that each ally will assist the victim state, including by the use of armed force if necessary. Article 6 defines the geographical scope, which includes the metropolitan territories of member states, their forces, vessels and aircraft when in or over those territories, or in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.

Three features of this structure are crucial.

1. Armed attack, not any hostile act

   
   

   Article 5 is reserved for the gravest cases. NATO’s own legal and strategic thinking, heavily influenced by the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, tends to treat “armed attack” as a subset of “use of force”: not every illegal use of force is necessarily an armed attack, and not every hostile act is a use of force at all. The scale, effects and context of the act matter.

   
   

2. Political discretion by the North Atlantic Council

   
   

   Even if conduct could be characterised in law as an armed attack, there is no automatic switch that flips to war. The North Atlantic Council must decide, by consensus, whether Article 5 is engaged and what form allied assistance will take. Even after 11 September 2001, when Article 5 was first and so far only invoked in response to the terrorist attacks upon the United States, the assistance measures were calibrated and evolved over time.

   
   

3. Evolution of the concept in non-kinetic domains

   
   

   In recent years NATO has indicated that serious cyber operations, and attacks upon space assets, could in principle satisfy the threshold for an Article 5 response if their consequences were comparable to those of a conventional armed attack. 

Scholarly work and NATO-adjacent commentary on cyber and sub-kinetic threats emphasise cumulative effects and severity. A single probing incident is unlikely to trigger Article 5; a sustained campaign that causes grave harm to critical infrastructure or loss of life might. 

Does the Yantar laser incident meet the Article 5 threshold?

Can dazzling RAF pilots from a Russian vessel near UK waters be credibly characterised as an “armed attack” upon the United Kingdom, or upon NATO forces more generally?

Several factors argue against this, at least on current information.

1. Limited physical effects

   
   

   At the time of writing there have been no reports of permanent injuries to pilots or damage to aircraft. The conduct is reckless and could easily have caused accidents, but the law of self-defence tends to look at actual scale and effects rather than what might have happened.

   
   

2. Nature of the means employed

   
   

   While it is theoretically possible that a laser could be used as an instrument of armed attack, for example if powerful enough to destroy a platform or inflict permanent disability, the systems used here appear calibrated primarily for harassment and sensor disruption. That makes it more analogous to radar lock-ons, aggressive manoeuvring, or close passes, all of which are dangerous but have historically been handled through diplomatic protests and military signalling rather than collective defence mechanisms.

   
   

3. Pattern versus isolated event

   
   

   NATO’s evolving practice suggests that sub-kinetic tools become candidates for Article 5 only in the context of a broader campaign with substantial, often strategic, effects. A single laser incident, however reprehensible, does not yet look like that. If Russian forces began systematically targeting allied aircrews with more powerful systems, producing a pattern of serious injuries or crashes, the calculus would change sharply.

   
   

4. Political appetite for escalation

   
   

   Even if an imaginative legal argument could be mounted, the North Atlantic Council would have to weigh the consequences of formally treating this episode as triggering Article 5. In the absence of casualties or major material damage, there is little sign that allies would wish to frame the matter in those terms. They are more likely to treat it as a serious incident, perhaps warranting consultations, but not as a casus foederis ("Treaty trigger") on the scale of 9/11.

All this suggests that, by itself, the laser attack on RAF pilots is very unlikely to trigger Article 5. It sits in the now familiar band of hostile, unlawful and escalatory conduct that falls short of the alliance’s collective defence threshold.

Could the incident nonetheless have NATO legal relevance?

The fact that the incident does not in itself amount to an armed attack does not mean NATO’s treaty framework is irrelevant.

1. Article 4 consultations

   
   

   Article 4 allows any ally to call for consultation whenever it considers its territorial integrity, political independence or security to be threatened. The United Kingdom would be entirely within her rights to ask for such consultations, particularly given the broader pattern of Russian probing around European seabed infrastructure and the precedent value of the Yantar incident.

   
   

2. Clarification of thresholds for non-kinetic attacks on forces

   
   

   The alliance has already begun to articulate how serious cyber or space operations might cross the Article 5 line. The use of lasers and other directed-energy systems against allied aircraft and vessels presents an analogous challenge. If, for example, a Russian ship blinded a NATO helicopter crew, causing fatalities, would that be treated as an armed attack upon the flag state? The logic of NATO’s cyber and space pronouncements suggests that it might. 

   
   

3. Protection of critical undersea infrastructure

   
   

   The gravest concern about Yantar is arguably not the laser use itself, but what her presence implies about Russian capabilities and intentions regarding the seabed. Energy pipelines, data cables and offshore wind farms are increasingly recognised as strategic targets. Sabotage of such assets in UK or allied waters, particularly at scale, could approach or cross the Article 5 threshold if it caused serious economic damage, fatalities or major disruption.

Here the laser incident matters as part of a pattern: it signals a willingness by Russian forces to run hazards and to interfere directly with British military monitoring of a ship that is itself suspected of scouting critical infrastructure.

The UK’s immediate options below the Article 5 threshold

Because this episode almost certainly does not trigger Article 5, the practical question for London is how to respond robustly while avoiding unwanted escalation.

Tools available include:

• Diplomatic protest and public attribution

  
  

  London can and probably will lodge formal protests in international fora and directly with Moscow, making clear that such behaviour is unacceptable. Public attribution, as already undertaken by Secretary of Defence John Healey, is part of a wider strategy of exposing and deterring Russian grey-zone behaviour. 

  
  

• Adjusted rules of engagement

  
  

  The United Kingdom has already signalled that she has changed her naval rules of engagement with respect to the Yantar. That might include closer shadowing, more assertive positioning to deny proximity to certain undersea assets, more active use of electronic surveillance and, if necessary, lethal or non-lethal measures to protect British aircraft.

• Operational coordination within NATO frameworks

  
  

  Recent operations in which Royal Navy destroyers, under direct NATO command, shadowed Russian vessels in UK waters show that the alliance can and will integrate such contingencies into its standing maritime posture. Incorporating responses to directed-energy harassment into NATO planning is a natural next step. 

  
  

• Legal and strategic signalling

  
  

  The United Kingdom, possibly alongside key allies, might choose to clarify publicly that serious physical harm to her aircrews or significant damage to her infrastructure, even if caused by non-traditional means such as lasers or cyber tools, would be regarded as a potential armed attack in the sense of Article 5. That would mirror earlier statements about cyber and space while leaving room for political judgement in each case. 

Broader implications: grey zone harassment and Alliance deterrence

From a strategic perspective, the Yantar incident is another test of NATO’s ability to deter a Russia that specialises in operating just below the traditional thresholds of war.

If the Alliance’s response is too muted, Moscow may conclude that it can normalise such harassment, gradually ratcheting up the intensity. If NATO responds in a manner that is overly dramatic relative to the harm done, it risks playing into Russian narratives that the Alliance is spoiling for a fight and may be forced into escalatory commitments that publics are not yet willing to sustain.

The likely outcome is a middle course: forceful public condemnation, tightened operational measures at sea and in the air, and quiet work within NATO to refine the legal and doctrinal understanding of how episodes like this relate to Articles 4 and 5. The key is to ensure that the Alliance’s red lines are neither so vague that they invite miscalculation nor so rigid that they force it into responses out of proportion to individual incidents.

For the United Kingdom, whose territory and infrastructure sit on the frontline of Russian probing in the North Atlantic, the episode is a reminder that deterrence today is as much about managing ambiguity in the grey zone as it is about the traditional calculus of tanks and missiles.

On any plausible view of the law and Alliance practice, the lasers fired from a Russian warship at UK pilots near British waters are not, in themselves, enough to trigger Article 5. They are, however, another warning shot in a broader contest, in which the boundary between harassment and armed attack is being tested in real time.