“We need to amend the laws so that the only ones able to take care of this — namely the Bundeswehr — are also given the authority to do so,” Thomas Röwekamp, the chair of the defense committee in the German Bundestag and a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative bloc, told POLITICO.
While the Bundeswehr is theoretically able to pick up arms domestically in the event of a major invasion, the drone incursions thus far don’t qualify as sufficiently grave attacks, according to legal experts. The Bundeswehr, based on current law, is only able to shoot down drones over military bases.
There’s no evidence that any of the drones that have recently entered German airspace carried weapons. Yet the Kremlin does appear to be using the drones for espionage, according to German authorities. Last year there were reports of unexplained drone sightings over facilities belonging to arms manufacturer Rheinmetall and chemicals group BASF.
Germany’s police have the legal right to shoot down such drones if deemed necessary, but they don’t have the technical capability. “The federal police, and also almost all state police forces, currently have no capabilities whatsoever for drone defense,” said defense committee chair Röwekamp.
Its forces can, for example, help identify drones or pass on information if requested — as happened recently when drones were spotted over Munich Airport. | Armin Weigel/Picture Alliance via Getty Images
The military has more of those capabilities, but is largely unable to act due in large part to the country’s history.
In Imperial Germany and in the pre-World War II Weimar Republic, the German army “was deployed frequently and ruthlessly, usually to strike Social Democrats and left-wing governments,” said public law professor Kathrin Groh of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. “A repeat of such measures had to be avoided in the 1949 constitution, which is why we have these strict rules for the Bundeswehr today.”