BERLIN — Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, announced Saturday that two unidentified unmanned aerial vehicles were detected over a western German military installation earlier this week, an incident that comes only 48 hours after an explosive-carrying drone was recovered at one of the country’s most critical freight airports.
Per an official statement from Germany’s Joint Force Command, base security surveillance at the Mechernich Bundeswehr facility first registered the two drones at approximately 10 p.m. local time Thursday. After the sighting was independently confirmed, military police were immediately dispatched to the area to conduct on-site checks.
The national military confirmed that the Euskirchen state police department has launched a formal criminal investigation into the incursion. As of Saturday evening, local law enforcement had not issued any public response to requests for comment on the case, and the Bundeswehr declined to share further details about the scope of the investigation or any potential leads regarding the drones’ operators.
This latest drone sighting comes amid a growing pattern of unauthorized drone incursions across critical European infrastructure sites. Over the past year, repeated mysterious drone flights over civilian and cargo airport airspace across EU member states triggered widespread public alarm and forced major disruptions to air travel, leading to the cancellation of dozens of commercial flights that left thousands of passengers stranded across the continent.
Thursday’s incursion follows the discovery of an explosive-laden drone at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport, a major international logistics hub that plays a key strategic role in military and humanitarian support operations for Ukraine. The drone was found shortly before midnight Tuesday and successfully defused by bomb disposal experts before it could cause harm. After the incident, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt warned that the episode marked a “new quality of danger” for German security.
Leipzig/Halle Airport is not only a top freight hub for global trade; it also hosts NATO’s Strategic Airlift International Solution (SALIS), a program that conducts daily operational flights to deliver military equipment to NATO battle groups deployed along the alliance’s eastern flank, stretching from Finland to Romania. The airport regularly accommodates Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft that move critical supplies to frontline forces amid Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This is not the first major security incident at the facility: earlier in 2024, an incendiary device ignited at an on-site logistics center, destroying a freight container in a suspected sabotage plot that Western security officials have attributed to Russian intelligence operatives. Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago, Western officials have repeatedly accused Russia and its proxy actors of carrying out dozens of coordinated sabotage attacks and disruptive security incidents across European soil.
In response to growing accusations linking Russian intelligence to the Leipzig drone incident, the Russian Embassy in Berlin issued a statement Friday dismissing the incident as part of a “new wave of anti-Russian hysteria in Germany.”