From the Ground to the Stars: The Vertical Politics of the EU Drone Wall and Airspace Defence

This research note analyses the European Commission's Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 as a manifestation of a new spatial and technological logic of European defence: the vertical territorialisation of security. Moving beyond traditional perimeter-based understandings of territorial defence, the Roadmap constructs a multi-layered continuum extending from drones and counter-drones, through air and missile defence, to outer space. Drawing on Stuart Elden's use of the concept of ‘vertical geopolitics’, the analysis situates the EU's emerging ‘drone wall’ and the European Space Shield as components of an effort to ‘secure the volume’ of Europe's sovereignty. This vertical logic reflects a shift towards electronic rather than physical control, where radars, sensors and jammers constitute an infrastructural reterritorialisation of airspace. At the same time, it reveals the European Commission's growing role as industrial convenor within what Marsh et al. term Europe's iron network. The article argues that vertical territorialisation operates simultaneously as a spatial strategy, a techno-industrial project and a political compromise, integrating divergent national interests under the Commission's evolving defence governance framework.