Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt will push for
anti-drone defenses at Saturday’s EU interior ministers’ summit, initially set
for migration talks.
More research is needed on anti-drone defenses, Dobrindt said in Saarbruecken, western Germany, the morning after drone sightings caused a multi-hour closure of Munich airport.
“At the meeting of European interior ministers this weekend in Munich, we will, in addition to the migration issues, also explicitly address the situation of drones and the threat posed by drones,”
he said.
Nearly 3,000 people were left stranded when dozens of flights were canceled and diverted due to drone sightings at Germany's Munich airport, prompting politicians to pledge strict new regulations that would allow drones to be shot down.
The disturbance at the Munich airport was the most recent in a string of similar events that have shook European aviation and sparked worries about possible Russian-led hybrid assaults on Ukraine's European allies.
In fact, the Kremlin has denied any role in the events.
The airport reported that a number of drone sightings late Thursday night prompted air traffic control to halt operations, resulting in the cancellation of 17 flights and causing travel disruptions for about 3,000 passengers, who were given food, blankets, and camp beds.
Fifteen more flights that were arriving were rerouted throughout the area.
Passengers checking in for a trip to Varna, Bulgaria, found that the departure board indicated that just a small number of flights had been canceled as airport operations restarted on Friday.
At approximately 5:25 a.m. (03:25 GMT), the first flight of the day landed from Bangkok.
Local and national police were looking into the event, according to public broadcaster BR. Federal and state police did not immediately comment.
However, he continued, it was impossible to identify the
drones' sizes and types due to the darkness.
The drone occurrences come after airspace intrusions last week caused airports in Denmark and Norway to briefly close. As a result, EU leaders supported proposals to strengthen the bloc's defenses with anti-drone measures during a summit in Copenhagen.
The Belgian Defense Ministry announced in Brussels that it has launched an investigation into multiple drones that flew over the German border military installation at Elsenborn throughout the night.
Following the temporary closure of Munich's well-liked Oktoberfest due to a bomb threat and the subsequent discovery of explosives in a residential building in the city's north, the airport interruption made the week much more uncomfortable for the city.
How would anti-drone measures affect airport operations and safety?
Airports are complex dynamic environments that involve
aircraft constantly moving, so any anti-drone solutions need to be implemented
in a way that does not disrupt aviation communications and systems.
In many cases, non-kinetic countermeasures (e.g., jamming signals, GPS spoofing) are preferred to disable drones because they do not create debris hazards when the drone is disabled; however, they must be closely managed and regulated to ensure that they do not interfere or interrupt other critical communications.
Any technology applied for the purpose of mitigation, closely follows and maintains existing aviation and national security laws and regulations to mitigate possible negative consequences.
Drone detection must be accurate, especially regarding false positives and other improper assessments, to minimize unnecessary disruption or security false alerts.