What happened?
Drones over airports have long ceased to be a marginal phenomenon and have become part of everyday security concerns. This became particularly clear on the evening of August 4, 2026, when a drone was discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport that, according to the Saxon State Criminal Police Office, had professional explosives and a detonator attached to it. The operational and investigative measures continued into the night of August 5. A complete public final report from the investigating authorities has not yet been issued. Leipzig/Halle Airport is also relevant from a security policy perspective, as it is a major European air freight hub handling international transport operations.
In an interview with Protector, Carsten Feddern, Managing Director of VfS, and lawyer Henry J. Bauer explain the technical options available for drone detection and defense, as well as the legal framework applicable to operators and authorities.
The Details
According to Feddern, the Leipzig/Halle case exposed a central weakness: classic airport security is heavily focused on controlled access for people, luggage and vehicles. Small aircraft, however, can fly over these security lines. If drones are operated autonomously, via mobile networks, or using uncatalogued radio protocols, surveillance systems designed solely to detect typical remote-control signals may prove ineffective.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) therefore describes drone incidents at airfields as a hybrid safety and security challenge. Not every drone sighting is automatically an attack – behind it could be ignorance, recklessness, technical malfunction, criminal intent, or state-directed reconnaissance. Police and operators must distinguish between these categories within minutes, sometimes seconds.
Five Steps of Professional Drone Defense
Feddern describes a five-step approach:
- Detection: Is there an object in the monitored airspace at all?
- Classification: Is it a drone, a bird, a helicopter, or another object?
- Identification: Is the device authorized, and are the operator, model, or Remote ID known?
- Tracking: Where is it heading, and which protected asset could be affected?
- Defense: Which measure is legally permissible, technically suitable, and justifiable for uninvolved parties?
Overview of Technical Sensor Systems
Radar systems detect and track physical flying objects even without radio signals and use movement and rotor characteristics for classification. Very small, slow-flying, or low-altitude devices remain difficult to detect, as does distinguishing them from birds. Radar is valuable as a long-range sensor but comparatively costly.
RF sensors passively search for remote control, telemetry, and video signals and can determine the drone type for known protocols, as well as the direction of the aircraft and control station when multiple sensors are used. Weakness: autonomous, radio-silent, or encrypted systems, as well as false alarms caused by the heavily congested radio spectrum.
Remote ID provides registration and position information for cooperative airspace users, but does not reliably reveal manipulated or non-transmitting aircraft. Daylight and thermal imaging cameras provide important visual confirmation but lose effectiveness in fog, precipitation, backlight, or darkness, and should ideally be automatically aligned using radar or RF data. Acoustic sensors operate passively but are heavily affected by aircraft, vehicles, and wind at airports, making them more suitable as a supplementary tool.
Feddern emphasizes: no single sensor reliably covers all threats and weather conditions. A robust system combines radar, radio frequency analysis, Remote ID, optical or thermal sensors, and acoustics where needed. Only this sensor fusion creates a unified air situation picture that supports decisions usable by authorities.
Context
For the video surveillance and security industry, the Leipzig/Halle case shows that classic perimeter protection concepts reach their limits once threats come from the air. Combining multiple sensor types requires software that merges reports in time and space, avoids duplicate alerts, and generates a traceable confidence assessment for each target.
The legal situation is complex: Bauer points to four operating principles of defense – interrupting control or navigation links, controlled takeover, physical capture or diversion using interceptor drones or nets, and damage or destruction as a last resort. Each method has side effects: a disrupted device may crash, takeover does not work with every protocol, and kinetic means cause debris and risks to people and facilities. The active use of jammers also requires frequency-related authorization.
According to Bauer, private operators should not derive authority to jam, take over, or destroy third-party drones merely from property ownership or from operating a detection system – doing so risks criminal liability, infringement of third-party rights, and liability risks. For operators, the focus therefore lies on detection, documentation, alerting, access security, and prepared operational measures.
The KRITIS Umbrella Act (KRITIS-Dachgesetz) is also central here: only the implementing regulations will clarify which concrete resilience obligations apply to operators for protection against drone attacks. The final version of the first KritisV has not yet entered into force, but according to Bauer, operators of critical infrastructure are well advised to start preparing now. The resulting resilience model could also become relevant as a recognized standard for insurers and courts when assessing damage claims.
Practical Tips
The following recommendations for airports and comparable infrastructures can be derived from Feddern's and Bauer's statements:
- Implement comprehensive, site-specific sensor fusion instead of single-sensor solutions, since no single system reliably covers all threats and weather conditions.
- Define binding decision-making and handover chains before an alert occurs, so no time is lost in an emergency.
- Test systems under real traffic conditions, in various weather situations, and with birds, vehicles, and authorized drones before putting them into operation.
- Where possible, have cameras automatically aligned to detected targets using radar or RF data to compensate for the limited field of view of optical-thermal sensors.
- Do not take unilateral countermeasures against drones without checking legal permissibility in the specific individual case – proportionality, necessity, and appropriateness are decisive.
- Actively monitor the development of defense standards under the KRITIS Umbrella Act and implement them promptly within your own organization.
Outlook
According to Bauer, the events of late summer 2025 – including incidents in Copenhagen, at German military facilities, and at airports – triggered a profound reform process for state defense powers, which became a key topic at the Conference of German State Interior Ministers on December 5, 2025. Structurally, this is giving rise to the Joint Drone Defense Center (GDAZ), while changes to the Aviation Security Act (LuftSiG), the Federal Police Act (BPolG), and the states' hazard prevention laws are being pursued at the regulatory level.
For private companies, significantly stricter limits apply independently of this: taking unilateral defensive action could make them liable for property damage, and in the case of collateral damage, even for bodily harm or homicide offenses, in addition to possible violations of telecommunications or data protection law. According to Bauer, a widely cited 2019 case from the Riesa Local Court, in which a private individual was acquitted of property damage charges after shooting down a neighbor's drone, cannot be applied to companies, since they merely pursue economic interests.
How robust the future standards will actually turn out to be, and what concrete obligations will arise from the KRITIS Umbrella Act for airports and other operators, remains to be seen. Security officers are nevertheless well advised to closely follow the development of resilience plans and defense standards in order to stay up to date both technically and legally.
