A quadcopter drone with plastic explosives attached to it flew unnoticed past air defence installations at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport, a key NATO airlift hub, on August 4.
The drone hit a Ukrainian cargo plane but failed to detonate. It fell onto the tarmac and was found four hours later by a bus driver who stepped on it and called security, German media reported. DNA traces linked the drone to a firebomb that was mailed to the same airport and set a freight container on fire in July 2024, the Bild tabloid reported.
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The incident marked a “new level of danger” for Germany, its interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said – while never naming Russia as a possible culprit.
“These threats are not the work of amateurs. Rather, they require very professional preparation and execution,” Dobrindt told reporters at the airport. “We’re dealing with possibly foreign powers.”
Dobrindt’s comments reflect Berlin’s decades-old policy of placating Moscow because of World War II grievances and Germany’s pragmatic approach to Russian oil and gas exports, which helped fuel its economic growth.
United States intelligence agencies reportedly believed the drone was Russian and the explosives it carried suggested a military manufacturer. The failed attack was designed to test NATO’s collective defensive resolve, The Wall Street Journal wrote on Friday.
Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunaus has a more sinister vision. He alleged on Thursday that Moscow is devising a false-flag attack on critical infrastructure in the Baltic region using captured Ukrainian drones to “frame” Kyiv. Even though he said the threat was not immediate, Poland and other Baltic states, which have also experienced drone incursions, have tightened security around their energy sites and logistical hubs.
‘Putin tests NATO’
Military analysts, air defence and drone warfare experts told Al Jazeera that they believe the drone was Russian and its failed strike is part of a much wider, years-old hybrid warfare campaign the Kremlin designed brazenly and meticulously.
Since 2024, they said, Moscow has been sending drones to a dozen NATO nations and Ireland to unnerve their governments, sow panic among civilians, identify air defence vulnerabilities, and check the speed of their response – or lack thereof – and the efficiency of coordination between NATO air forces.
Russian President Vladimir “Putin tests NATO and shows [member states] how weak they are,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who specialised in air defence for decades, told Al Jazeera.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Russian drones forced these nations to halt operations at airports, disrupted logistical operations and penetrated the perimeters of nuclear sites and defence installations where advanced US weapons or French submarines were located.
In a July report, it said Moscow most likely used its “shadow fleet” of tankers shipping Russian oil that traverses European maritime routes and international waters with relative impunity to launch and receive the drones.
The campaign followed a large expulsion of alleged Russian spies from embassies throughout Europe who were accused of collecting intelligence for Moscow.
The campaign has become “a series of tactical successes for the Kremlin and a strategic failure of allied air defence”, the IISS said.
Russia has dismissed claims that it is behind drone incursions into Europe as “scare stories”.
Europe’s entire architecture of air defence has for decades been built around detecting and defeating planes and missiles.
Detecting drones, attributing them to a certain nation and authorising an interception takes precious time, and using fighter jets and missiles to down them is ineffective and expensive.
Moreover, the Kremlin’s campaign “exposed political fractures” within NATO and exploited the gap between what European militaries could do and what their governments were prepared to authorise, the IISS said.
Europe’s defence systems ‘outdated by at least five years’
The most likely mastermind behind the Leipzig drone incident is the Main Intelligence Directorate, Moscow’s key foreign intelligence agency, known by its Russian acronym, GRU, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University.
The GRU’s recent operations have included global cyberespionage campaigns and attempts to disrupt military and maritime logistics in Europe.
The Leipzig operation’s “execution from the (Russian) military standpoint is not bad”, Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera, as it has succeeded in troubling Europe.
He concluded that European systems of identifying and intercepting drones “are outdated by at least five years” at a time when battles over Ukraine have made drone warfare cheaper and more lethal.
“There’s too few of [these systems], and they operate too slowly,” he said.
A pioneer of drone warfare in Ukraine said the actual reconnaissance data is irrelevant in comparison with the panic and political stupor Russian drone sightings create.
“What is the sense of flying over there when everything is already known? It makes sense when you hit a site and then want to check whether you strike it or not,” Andrey Pronin, who runs a Kyiv-based school for drone pilots, told Al Jazeera.
“It’s more like a test of responsiveness. Will there be ‘concerns’ or ‘serious concerns’?” he said mockingly about the usual response of European governments.
To prevent similar incidents, “any unknown flying objects should be destroyed,” he said.
‘Europe is not ready for a war’
NATO’s response has been decried as too slow, costly and cautious.
Drones have largely replaced conventional artillery, fighter jets and sniper rifles over the front line in Ukraine, but the Western military-industrial complex is lagging far behind.
No NATO member state or European nation has swarms of drone interceptors at hand.
“They all live with old NATO doctrines that no longer work,” Pronin said. “Europe is not ready for a war. They’re preparing, trying, but they’re not ready.”
Romanenko singled out one of the largest incidents that involved Russian drones over a NATO member state.
On September 10, Russia sent almost two dozen drones into Polish airspace, prompting Warsaw to halt flights at four airports.
Only two drones were shot down while Ukrainian air defences downed 500 Russian drones that day, he said.
“It would have been funny had it not been so sad,” Romanenko said. “Russians carried out all their tasks while NATO was only waking up.”
Smaller but similar incidents have taken place over other European nations, proving that “their air defence is weak and is not designed for countering” drones, he said.
The response was indecisive at best.
“This is an ostrich position,” Romanenko said about the few steps taken by the Polish government. “They said they’d made conclusions but didn’t implement a thing.”
