Suspicious unidentified drones have been regularly spotted over German military training grounds for more than a year, the German newspaper Bild reported on January 7. Drones are especially frequent in places in Germany where Ukrainian soldiers are being trained to use Western weapons. The finger-pointing game is risky at this time, but it might have something to do with Russia.
Ukrainian drone and cruise missile hunters. Machine guns, even much smaller than this one, are sometimes very effective against low flying drones. Image credit: National Guard of Ukraine via Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)
The Bundeswehr suspects that Moscow uses those drones to spy on the German army and Ukrainians being trained in Germany, but cannot prove it, as none of these drones have been shot down or pulled down using electronic warfare tools and investigated, Bild reports. The problem was acknowledged by Nils Hilmer, the state secretary in the German Ministry of Defense. He lamented that the German soldiers could not capture the drones or their pilots.
But things are even worse than you think – suspect drones are being spotted every week! The German military has been aware of this problem for a long time – the appearance of drones near military facilities was reported as far back as October 2022.
General Carsten Breuer ordered military police to take down any unwanted drones with the HP 47 jammer, but the little spy toys kept flying. Not a single drone was taken down!
These drones usually appear in places where the Germans are training Ukrainian soldiers. After all, Germany transferred a wide variety of weapons to Ukraine, including tanks and howitzers, so the Ukrainians were training to use those tools. Someone, possibly the Russians, was trying to monitor this process with the help of some commercial drones. For example, drones were spotted where the Ukrainians were training to use Leopard 1A5 main battle tanks.
Are these drones really spying for Russia? No one really knows – it needs repeating that not a single drone was taken down and not a single pilot was caught. These are small drones and their pilots are never far away – still no evidence to investigate. There is a possibility that this was done by casual curious people or even journalists, but there is reason to believe that it was a much larger espionage operation.
In some cases, one military site was observed by several drones at the same time. This suggests that larger organizations are at work, rather than individual pilots. The footage never appeared online. In addition, it is very risky to do this just for your own entertainment – if the pilot was caught, he would have to explain himself in a long and tedious process, and then he would be punished in one way or another. Why do it if the reward doesn’t outweigh the risk? This alone makes Russia a potential suspect.
Obviously, it is not news that Russia wants to spy on Germany or, on a wider picture, NATO. NATO wants to spy on Russia too. It is just disappointing that they can see these drones every week and cannot take them down. Ask Ukrainians how to do that – they now have experience.
Written by Povilas M.
Source: English.nv.ua