Germany To Allow Police To Shoot Down Drones (reuters.com) 60
Germany's cabinet has approved a new law allowing police to shoot down or disable rogue drones that threaten airspace security, following recent airport disruptions attributed to Russian reconnaissance. "Other techniques available to down drones include using lasers or jamming signals to sever control and navigation links," notes Reuters. From the report: With the new law, Germany joins European countries that have recently given security forces powers to down drones violating their airspace, including Britain, France, Lithuania and Romania. A dedicated counter-drone unit will be created within the federal police, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said, and researchers would consult with Israel and Ukraine as they were more advanced in drone technology. Police would deal with drones flying at around tree-level, whereas more powerful drones should be tackled by the military, Dobrindt said.
Germany recorded 172 drone-related disruptions to air traffic between January and the end of September 2025, up from 129 in the same period last year and 121 in 2023, according to data from Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS). German military drills last month in the northern port city of Hamburg demonstrated how like a spider, a large military drone shot a net at a smaller one in mid-flight, entangling its propellers and forcing it to the ground, where a robotic dog trotted over to seek possible explosives. Shooting down drones could be unsafe in densely populated urban areas, however, and airports do not necessarily have detection systems that can immediately report sightings.
Germany recorded 172 drone-related disruptions to air traffic between January and the end of September 2025, up from 129 in the same period last year and 121 in 2023, according to data from Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS). German military drills last month in the northern port city of Hamburg demonstrated how like a spider, a large military drone shot a net at a smaller one in mid-flight, entangling its propellers and forcing it to the ground, where a robotic dog trotted over to seek possible explosives. Shooting down drones could be unsafe in densely populated urban areas, however, and airports do not necessarily have detection systems that can immediately report sightings.
Begun, the Drone Wars have. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, had to do it. It was just there,man.
But, on a serious note.. I saw vid of a drone swarm in China gone wrong, and it torched a town.
Imagine drone swarms designed for that.
Begun, the Drone Wars have. Born in the Ukraine/Russia war.
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Re:Begun, the Drone Wars have. (Score:4, Informative)
https://just-fucking-google.vercel.app?s=Chinese%20drone%20show%20disaster&e=finger [vercel.app]
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Next look for a rise in 'lost bullet' injuries, as whatever they shoot at it is going to come down somewhere. The maximum range of a rifle can be four kilometers or more.
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Next look for a rise in 'lost bullet' injuries, as whatever they shoot at it is going to come down somewhere. The maximum range of a rifle can be four kilometers or more.
This is basic firearms safety knowledge. I'd like to think people carrying firearms in public service have some. That's probably more likely in Germany than in many places actually.
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Cigarette balloons (Score:2)
Re: Cigarette balloons (Score:2)
How do you know? And by that I mean "what can you provide that will make us trust that information?".
Regardless, is it a bad thing to shoot down these drones?
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Re:Genius (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody will use firearms. There will be special police units armed with appropriate AAC weaponry. But it will be a police action, not a military action, so the ruzzkie propaganda won't be able to claim it is a "NATO war against our assets in their airspace".
And of course you can see the answer to your question - what can go wrong when a drone is shot from the sky incompetently - if you follow the ruzzkie news. At least a quarter of putinland's oil-processing facilities have been destroyed or damaged by falling debris from Ukrainian drones that were incompetently "shot down before they could strike their targets".
Re: Genius (Score:2)
Citation requested for the oil refinery claim. They are not small places. You'd need masses of drones to take one out.
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...or an exhaust port and one whiny pilot to send it with feeling.
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The "drone debris" takes out the distillation towers.
That puts the refinery out of work for a long time everywhere and for good in putinland, because theirs are all imported and aren't replaceable at the moment.
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Also, be my guest. While you're at it, look up what a web search site is, can be very nifty at times:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/d... [forbes.com]
Masses of drones (Score:2)
>> You'd need masses of drones to take one out.
Exactly. This is why Ukraine is sending masses of drones to each and every refinery within the borders of Russia.
It works.
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Citation requested for the oil refinery claim. They are not small places. You'd need masses of drones to take one out.
You only need to hit certain critical portions to take a refinery offline. Specifically, either the cracking unit or the condensation unit.
Also, unlike the West, Russia doesn't have vast storage capabilities so they store oil inside pipelines rather than tanks. Once refineries start being struck and taken offline that causes a ripple effect. Oil isn't being processed which means oil isn't moving through the pipes. Without oil moving even less production takes place since remaining refineries can only proc
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"Falling debris" is Russian newspeak for "drones that hit their targets and blew things up". Which they are not allowed to admit, so they blame the fire and smoke on falling debris.
AAC? Airway Allocation Control? Got your TLAs mixed up?
Germany makes one of the best anti-drone weapons, the Skynex system, an autocannon. But the military is constitutionally restricted to defending the country against external threats, and Germany does not share any borders with Russia. The federal and regional police are offic
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"Falling debris" is Russian newspeak
You don't say.jpg
AAC?
Anti-aircraft, smartypants, look it up.
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AAC?
Anti-aircraft, smartypants, look it up.
Heavily overloaded acronym. Anti-aircraft is not even among the 10 first hits on AAC on Duckduckgo, so looking it up is not helpful advice in this case.
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You should have learned to pay attention to the context instead of running off to your AI mentor.
It helps a lot.
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The acronym is AA. Consider trying to use the same language as the rest of us.
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They like to claim their air defence worked perfectly, but the shoddy Ukrainian (or NATO) drones, fell apart and rained debris down on the target ....it's better PR than admitting the Air defence systems didn't work, were elsewhere, or they were incompetent
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It is, unfortunately, a too optimistic projection. Putlerland has some spare capacity and the drone damage is repaired reasonably quickly.
https://carnegieendowment.org/... [carnegieendowment.org]
This will end in disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
What the hell are they smoking?
Numerous very experienced people have correlated a great number of the so called "drone" sightings with the ADSB tracks of legitimate aircraft and not one shred of evidence has been presented that these "sightings" are actually drones operated by Russia or other bad actors.
Remember New York and New Jersey last year when the skies were filled with "mystery drones" [nbcnews.com] that turned out to be simply scheduled night flights of passenger jets and helicopters?
Then there was a spate of "drone" sightings over US Military airbases [bbc.com] in the UK. These turned out to (once again) be misidentified manned aircraft, including F15s from the base itself!
So now exactly the same hysteria is sweeping across Eastern Europe with unskilled observers claiming to be seeing "drones" when in fact they're simply seeing lights in the sky that are navigation lights from aircraft and even balloons smuggling cigarettes [rnz.co.nz].
If the Germans open fire on these "mystery lights" then there is a huge potential for tragedy here because they really won't listen to people much smarter than them who on two previous occasions (NY/NJ and Lakenheath) provided all the information needed to debunk the allegations of "drones".
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You must be very innocent at heart if you believe every incident is dutifully reported by the press. Quite the opposite, in the "interests" of "keeping the tensions low", most incidents don't make it into the news.
Also, excluding the confirmed fact of many drones ostensibly aimed at Ukraine crossing into NATO airspace (Poland, Hungary, Romania) and elsewhere (mostly Belarus) over the last few years, which you choose to ignore, yes, it is an absolute case of hysteria.
And of course you're correct to point out
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They are using spy drones inside NATO airspace to track deliveries and target them at the border inside Ukraine.
They are using drones to test how NATO will react to provocations like airspace violations.
Their drones sometimes get lost and roam into NATO airspace.
They are using drones to pester and intimidate neighbors.
In short, the ruzzkies are a bunch of fucking terrorists and behave accordingly.
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stalemate? slow on the news. the new-new-new narrative is that nato is winning again. winning! i'm telling you! pinky swear!
btw zelenksy already prepared his parachute: "as long as ukraine continues to exist, we won". well, there is a small possibility that ukraine actually ceases to exist completely as such, but in a sense he's not wrong: the current warmongers will never accept defeat, no matter what, they are going to keep poking russia until they are replaced or hell breaks loose. the us won't accept de
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the current warmongers will never accept defeat, no matter what, they are going to keep poking russia until they are replaced or hell breaks loose
The "current warmongers" have names, and they are Putin, Patrushev, Shoigu, Kalantaryan, Volodin and so on, the 300 or so war criminals from the "Lake" cooperative and their servants in the soviet of the pederation, who were called one by one to confirm the start of the full-scale war back in the end of February 2022. The ties this lot has with the EU is that many of their kids live there, and they have a lot of property bought with money they've stolen from the ruzzkie populace.
You can also count as warmon
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Good thing they ignore the anecdotes of random slashdotters.
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If the Germans open fire on these "mystery lights" then there is a huge potential for tragedy
Of course Russia would totally never do anything nefarious in European airspace (cough). You are certainly correct the big net won't work well on a fighter jet but I'd try not to lose too much sleep over it.
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Your link doesn't say anything about F15's being mistaken for drones. What it says is:
A spokesperson for USAF in Europe said: "We can confirm that small unmanned aerial systems [UASs] were spotted in the vicinity of and over RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall and RAF Feltwell.
"The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration.
"The UASs were actively monitored and installation leaders determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents or critical infrastructure."
It also doesn't say the drones in New Jersey were "scheduled night flights of passenger jets and helicopters."
What it does say is,
"After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons"
The question isn't what the hell "they" are smoking, it's what the hell you are smoking. Though I suspect that's not the problem.
You're ready to accuse others of "hysteria" when actually you're just reciting a narrative that hasn't be established as fact, and since you're citing authorities t
Denying the existence of drones (Score:2)
>> so called "drone" sightings with the ADSB tracks of legitimate aircraft
Denying the existence of drones won't help.
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Numerous very experienced people have correlated a great number of the so called "drone" sightings with the ADSB tracks of legitimate aircraft and not one shred of evidence has been presented that these "sightings" are actually drones operated by Russia or other bad actors.
Why would you think this is about Russia? This is about anyone who flys drones close to Airports without explicit permission. And yes, anyone doing that is by definition a bad actor.
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If the Germans open fire on these "mystery lights" then there is a huge potential for tragedy here because they really won't listen to people much smarter than them who on two previous occasions (NY/NJ and Lakenheath) provided all the information needed to debunk the allegations of "drones".
German police is not armed like the US counter part. They usually have rifles at most, though there are some assault rifles. So they will definitely not be able to reach a plane flying at some altitude and they probable recognise a starting or landing plane, as those appear most often around airports and you can phone them and ask. Also they are not that trigger happy to shoot at first sight.
Additionally consider that this is just some politicians doing a publicity stunt, because law experts are of the opin
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They won't be shooting down random aircraft on the say-so of members of the public.
They will likely have enhanced surveillance to go with this. Everyone is working on small drone detection and classification. They probably won't shoot them down either, they will use other drones to crash into them. Shooting is risky, most of those bullets will come back down.
I see Russian Drones everywhere these days! (Score:3)
They even managed to copy the Amazon logos!
I must visit my local zoo ASAP (Score:2)
"German military drills last month in the northern port city of Hamburg demonstrated how like a spider, a large military drone shot a net at a smaller one in mid-flight, entangling its propellers and forcing it to the ground"
I never knew spiders were so exciting. Also, why did Peter Parker not get the power of flight from his famous biting incident?
I hope they know the old saying (Score:2)
What goes up, must come down.
Shooting at drones and killing tourists 2 miles away will kill that order quite rapidly.
UK and several other countries already have this (Score:2)
The Police specifically have the powers and equipment to bring down drones, they they are causing a safety issue (usually around airports)
Signal jamming (Score:2)
Signal jamming seems safer, I suppose this technique would be also allowed.