The risk of drone is growing – and Germany is missing a defense plan

Recently in Schleswig-Holstein: The site of the Brunsbüttel industrial park will be scanned several times by larger drones in August, sometimes in the middle of the night. Nearby is an LNG terminal that delivers liquid gas for the German gas network. A few hundred meters further, the locks to the North Ostsee Canal are located. And the Brunsbüttel nuclear power plant, until 2007 on the net, is not far. There is quickly suspicion: spy of Russian services. The public prosecutor’s office is determined.

Brunsbüttel is not the only place in Germany where no drones should actually fly, and yet some are spotted again and again. At military training areas where Ukrainian soldiers are trained. At airports and other critical infrastructure. The cases are piling up and are an increasingly political problem because they throw a bad light on German drone defense. Are we sufficiently prepared?

“We are almost blank in Germany in drones in drones and effective skills for drone defense, but also the electronic combat management,” warns Roderich Kiesewetter. The ability is “underdeveloped”, says the CDU member of the Bundestag and former Bundeswehr Colonel star. And that’s why Germany sees massive problems.

The Greens are also alarmed. “There are two gaps: a skill gap, very real. Obviously, there have been no sufficient systems to ward off such military drones,” says Schleswig-Holstein Greens MP Jan Kürschner. “Secondly, it is a problem of dealing with the responsibilities.” The drone defense is initially original police task, says Kürschner. “However, the police are currently simply overwhelmed. We urgently need to deal with this problem.”

The confusion of responsibilities develops into a security risk. The Bundeswehr has the most precise options for air surveillance. If a drone is sighted near a German military location, according to a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Defense, it should only be intervened in exceptional cases: when there is an immediate danger to the location or the soldiers.

In all other cases, the responsibility of the Bundeswehr ends on the barrack fence. Outside, according to the spokesman, “we have to coordinate with the civilian authorities who are responsible for this area, and they must then act.”

Operators of critical infrastructures such as the LNG terminal or the chemical park in Brunsbüttel have to protect themselves from accidents. One reason why company fire brigades and factory protection are standard. “The large chemical parks, substations, wind farms with their data centers, all of this is regulated by private security services,” says Martin Maslaton, representative of the industry association Civil drone (BVZD). “But legally there is no permission to ward off drones.” Some of the possibilities are even expressly prohibited: “Some of the effective measures would take place outside of their own property.”

What Maslaton thinks: drones are usually brought to land by disturbing the radio signal between the drone and the pilot. The aircraft should then automatically start landing or return to the starting point. In order to force this, however, a strong radio transmitter must be used in a targeted manner – the so -called jamming. But this can also interfere with all other radio networks in the area. The operation is almost always prohibited for private companies. Like the Bundeswehr, they have to call the police at drones outside their own.

After all: Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have procured drone defense systems for the police in recent months. Officials are currently being trained on the systems.

The federal police at Frankfurt Airport will receive a drone defense system from Securiton, for “detection, verification and intervention” – recognize, check, intercept. Securiton, a daughter of the Swiss Securitas company, has already developed drone defense solutions for the World Economic Forum. It can recognize drones, force to land and determine the location of the pilots. The target group here too: small and small drones.

A project was carried out at the Bundeswehr University in Hamburg to combat drones. Good drones should fish undesirable drones from the sky – with shot nets in which the attacked drone gets stuck. The “Falke project” promises a “dynamic dogfight” – the fully automatic intercept of the other drone. The system was first tested at Hamburg Airport – and works. But this too is only aligned against small drones, the hunter dries flies quickly for a small area for a maximum of 100 kilometers per hour.

The falcon should also be helpless against drones of military quality classes. What civilian drone defense systems can hardly do: intercept the scabs like the Russian Orlan or even combat drones. They fly largely autonomously, much faster and sometimes hundreds of kilometers. They are the much greater danger.

For the CDU member of the Bundestag Roderich Kiesewetter it is clear: Such drones will hardly be used with the device that is now available. “There is no artificial intelligence modules for automatic target detection,” he says. “The drone defense on our frigates, for example, is not sufficient for the threats, which is why our military performance is more than limited in the Red Sea, for example.” There, the frigate Hessen shot drones from the Huthi militias-and once almost accidentally a US drone.

And at home in Germany? With the Skyranger, the Bundeswehr is currently creating a cannon wheel armor that can shoot drones. 19 pieces were ordered for the successor of the out of service. That is three more than the Bundeswehr has airfields and aerial nest: 16 in Germany.

This faces more than 2000 systems that are considered to be critical infrastructure such as waterworks or power plants in Germany. Depending on how you count, there are tens of thousands of sensitive systems, the failure of which would cause Germany to be great.

Aircraft missiles such as Iris-T-SLS are also in short supply and expensive. In addition, the even more dangerous attack weapons, planes, cruise missiles and rockets are intended. Gun manufacturers such as Rheinmetall or KNDS are therefore currently developing smaller systems for shooting – often also in autonomous operation. Raytheon and Diehl Defense have even developed cannons that are supposed to clean the sky with targeted energy shots of drones. But their use in the densely populated Federal Republic outside of a war seems hardly conceivable.

Could your own, armed drones be the solution to get gone drones from the sky? Not yet. For years, federal governments had argued about the purchase of armed drones for the Bundeswehr’s missions. The Bundeswehr has been available to the Bundeswehr five drones from the Israeli type Herontp Lease the Bundeswehr. They were intended for missions abroad such as Mali or Afghanistan, where opponents were armed with rifles, grenade growers, pick-ups and armor fits. For a scenario with an opponent like Russia and its military skills, they are largely useless, lame ducks: they would have been quickly shot from heaven, it is said from military circles. However, the Bundeswehr does not have any other combat drones – none that other drones could get from the sky.

CDU man Kiesewetter therefore relies on closer cooperation with Ukraine: “Significant developments pass the reality of discussion in Germany, let alone that we invest in the structure with relevant partners.” The Ukrainian armaments companies are currently the largest experts in this field that Germany can only benefit from this.

However, a problem would remain even if the lack of technology were obtained: a drone shot on critical infrastructure such as chemical systems, LNG terminals or power plants harbors high risks. Parts of the debris could trigger devastating consequences there. “You can’t shoot the drones over Brunsbüttel,” says Jan Kürschner, a member of the Green State Parliament.

There the excitement is over. For a few weeks now there has been peace at the Brunsbüttel night sky. Only how long, nobody knows. “No, the citizens don’t have to worry,” said Mayor Martin Schmedtje star. But a bad feeling remains: “Personally, the drone flights made me thoughtful, as they have the conflict in Ukraine directly on our doorstep.” Schmedtje will not be the last German mayor who has to think about it.

There are currently no changes planned to the legal requirements for drone flights. And a law on better protection of critical infrastructures has been in the federal government for over a year. It should actually come into force in October.