[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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[Edit typo.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.