Malta’s Sky Soldiers: Inside the AFM’s Elite Unit Trained to Swat Killer Drones

A sleek grey quadcopter lifts off above the Grand Harbour, its four rotors humming like an oversized wasp. From the Upper Barrakka Gardens, tourists point their phones skyward, expecting another influencer’s sunset reel. Instead, the drone suddenly freezes mid-air, shudders, and executes a neat U-turn back to the helipad of a nondescript white van parked beneath the bastions. Inside, three soldiers in olive fatigues high-five: the Armed Forces of Malta’s brand-new Counter-Unmanned Air System (C-UAS) cell has just passed its first public test.

The scene, staged last week for invited media, marks Malta’s entry into an exclusive club of micro-states—think Singapore, Luxembourg, Bahrain—that have decided a drone in the wrong hands is no longer a geek’s toy but a clear and present danger. With 5,000-plus aircraft movements criss-crossing Malta’s skies every week, a single kilo of explosive mounted on a DJI Mavic could shut down the island’s only runway in minutes. “We’re not preparing for ‘if’,” Lt. Col. Ramon Grech told reporters. “We’re preparing for ‘when’.”

The six-person unit—hand-picked from the 1st Regiment, the AFM’s quick-reaction force—spent six weeks at Italy’s Poggio Renatico air-defence school learning to marry radar, radio and rifle. Their toolbox is part sci-fi, part farmer’s market: a Swedish-made “pocket radar” the size of a pizza box, Italian jamming rifles that look like plastic Super Soakers, and a Maltese-fabricated net-launcher built from recycled tuna-pen mesh in Marsa’s shipyards. Total price tag: €340,000, footed entirely by EU Internal Security Fund grants. “We joke that it’s the cheapest insurance policy the country ever bought,” said Sgt. Lara Bugeja, the unit’s only female operator and a part-time DJ from Żabbar who used to sync festival lights before she started syncing kill-switches.

Culturally, the move ends Malta’s long love affair with “friendly” drones. Since 2014, the Malta International Airshow has opened with a drone ballet over SmartCity; wedding videographers at Ta’ Qali vineyards depend on aerial shots to sell fairy-tale packages; even festa fireworks are now choreographed by hovering cameras. But the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine—and the subsequent wave of cheap, militarised drones on the black market—flipped the narrative. “Nonna started asking if her figolli recipe could be spied on from the sky,” laughs Bugeja. “Suddenly everyone had an opinion.”

Community impact is already visible. Within days of the unit’s certification, Transport Malta amended its “no-fly” map: the entire capital zone, from Floriana to Senglea, is now a red circle. Hobbyists must register devices heavier than 250 g via a new AFM portal that asks for ID, flight plan and purpose. Model-aircraft clubs, long tolerated on the Żonqor plateau, face spot checks. “We feel like we’re being punished for someone else’s war,” complains 14-year-old Jake Cassar, whose homemade FPV racer was grounded mid-practice last Sunday. His father, a hunter, is more pragmatic: “If jamming saves one Alitalia flight from engine ingestion, I’ll give up my weekend buzz.”

Tourism officials are treading carefully. The Malta Tourism Authority has quietly asked influencers to geo-tag drone shots taken before the ban, lest followers assume the island is on lock-down. Meanwhile, five-star hotels are rebranding rooftop pools as “drone-free sanctuaries,” promising guests uninterrupted privacy. “It’s the new towel-war,” quips general manager Claire Zammit at the Phoenicia, where a jammer disguised as a terracotta pot now guards the sundeck.

Back at the AFM’s Luqa barracks, the real work has only begun. Operators train nightly, chasing rogue quadcopters through the maze of Valletta’s back alleys, learning which stone walls bounce Wi-Fi and which church domes block GPS. They nickname the city “Mini-Gaza”—not flippantly, but because the tight grid resembles the urban canyons where Hamas drones once dropped grenades. “If we can master Malta, we can master anywhere,” says Grech, eyeing a wall map dotted with ferry routes, LNG tanker lanes and the new American embassy.

Conclusion: For an island whose greatest historical threat was the silence of a siege gun, the buzz of a battery-powered propeller is the 21st-century cannonball. Malta’s new drone hunters won’t make headlines every day, but their presence redraws the mental map of every citizen who looks up. The sky is no longer the limit; it’s the frontline.