this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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41
German police vow to significantly expand drone defence after incident at Leipzig airport (www.tagesschau.de)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by tardigrade@scribe.disroot.org to c/europe@feddit.org
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

[Original in German. Automated translation with minimal edits.] ...

The German Federal Police are to provide more protection against drone attacks at German airports. 300 special forces are to be deployed at eight locations across Germany. More defence technology is also planned.

...

The special forces are to track down drones, intercept them and, if necessary, render them harmless. So far, the federal government has assumed around 130 people.

Instead of four locations for drone defence in Germany, eight are now planned "in order to be on site quickly and flexibly when needed". The spokeswoman did not say where the future locations would be.

...

Last week, a drone loaded with explosives was discovered near Ukrainian cargo planes at Leipzig/Halle Airport. Meanwhile, the newspaper Zeit reported, citing surveillance cameras, that the drone had been flown deliberately towards a Ukrainian cargo plane and had hit its wing. Traces of the impact were visible on one wing of the Antonov aircraft.

...

However, the missile, which was equipped with Semtex explosive, did not explode. The explosives may have detached on impact and were not found on the drone itself, but at some distance away. It is unclear why the explosive device did not detonate.

...

The German government has not yet commented on progress in the investigation or possible links to previous operations with connections to Russia. Security circles are convinced that the drone was modified by a professional with technical expertise.

In July 2024, an air freight parcel ignited in the DHL logistics centre in Leipzig. Security circles believe that the package was placed on Russia's behalf. At that time, Germany probably only narrowly escaped an aircraft crash.

...

[Edit typo.]

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[–] Melchior@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago

Ukraine has been trying really really hard to properly defend against Russian drones and still struggle with it. That is during war time with a lot of resources spend and mostly in a war zone, with less civilian risk. During peace time this becomes a lot harder. Shooting down birds is not a good idea for example. Electronic counter measures are not a decent option either, since radio communication is used for a lot of civilian applications. It for example would require turning of the mobile internet. That is not to mention the number of police officers required to reasonably protect every potential target.

This is not to say that police should not have anti drone options. They are clearly needed to protect large events for example. But it is impossible to protect everything. The real solution is to take out hostile actors before they do something like this. In this case that means helping Ukraine.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

eight are now planned β€œin order to be on site quickly and flexibly

Quickly, after an explosion?

To be safe they need locally installed systems that can take down drones.

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago

Useless symbol politics once more.

If anyone wanted to do anything serious and impactful against problematic drones, the only way would be to equip the people on site to deal with them. All these "special task forces" will only show up when the drone is either long gone, or if it's one of the exploding kind, has long found its target. (unless it has been roundhouse kicked out of the sky by a random bus driver)

[–] LowtierComputer@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How would these systems work?

[–] plyth@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am no expert but I think they need this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_35

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That will work against large drones (relatively rare), but is way overkill against smaller ones, and I'm somewhat doubtful it'll even be able to target them properly. It will also pose a not insignificant danger to anything around it for quite some distance, because ammunition that doesn't hit or explode will fall back on the ground with some force.

I guess for the smaller drones like the one that bus driver kicked out of the sky on Leipzig airport, giving every other cop a shotgun would work better.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why would it not work against small drones? It is supposed work against swarms. Though strangely enough, in their presentation video, the small drone keeps flying.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/r-AVQxhJnbc

I don't think that shotguns are enough. A drone could do a high approach and then drop down from above. At an airport, there wouldn't be somebody next to every plane.

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Impressive, didn't expect that. But that still leaves the danger to the surroundings. Even if this fires air-burst ammunition that should theoretically be fused to self-destruct before it impacts anywhere it shouldn't, it is a quite large calibre, so if the fuse on a single shot fails, (things like that happen, nothing is 100% perfect) someone some place quite far away might have a bit of a problem, 35mm in diameter, and travelling at several times the speed of sound.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't think that anybody in power values an injured person more than a plane. Though an expoding plane should already put more people at risk than the falling amunition.

[–] HieroProtagonist@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

They may not value an injured person more than a plane... but they value one thing: Votes.

You can bet that the moment a civilian person is only slightly injured during an attempt to shoot down a drone the Bild "newspaper" and hordes of bots (either the electronic or of the meat kind) will curbstomp the politicians who are responsible.

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Even if there were total disregard for life safety (which there isn't, at least not on this side of the conflict), the material damage this can do is immense, too, especially in a high value environment like an airport.

In that conflict loosely related to those drone incidents, we have seen multiple incidents of anti-drone defence causing more damage than the actual drone attack, due to reckless use of potent weapons near vulnerable facilities. Nobody in their right mind would want that, even though in an all-out war with large scale attacks, more risk is acceptable than in a "not quite war yet" scenario where hostile intelligence services are committing small scale, single point terrorist acts.