Back in my early 90s schooldays, I missed most of the physics curriculum. Teenage me spent lessons flicking through magazines, snacking or listening to my Walkman in the back row – until being eventually kicked out.
I regret this now, of course. It’s embarrassing having to Google basics like the bloody difference between volts, watts, and amperes. Little comfort that at parent-teacher meetings Herr Felke used to inform my mum that if I only studied I’d be a physics genius. Bless him.
He meant well, but the reason for my indifference was actually him and three lads in the front turning what felt like every lesson into a military tech chat about fighter jets, tanks and whatnot. I couldn’t have cared less.
Given the state of world affairs, however, I have had to smarten up on Leo I and II, the F-35 (which Germany finally ordered from the US only to learn now that Trump can essentially ground them), the Taurus cruise missile – and drones, the game-changer in Ukraine.
Kyiv not falling to Russia within the first weeks of the war? Largely down to drones. And without counter-drone measures, Ukrainian battalions are sitting ducks – just like the civilians whose homes were destroyed in the latest wave of Russian drone attacks.
With Chancellor Scholz warning for three years that this war could spill over to us, you’d think the Bundeswehr would have stocked up on combat drones. Go on, take a guess. Do we have a hundred? A thousand? Nope. Zero.
Not a single armed drone in the German army. No anti-drone defences, either. Our military isn’t allowed these basic, relatively cheap tools. Drones do cost a few million each, but that is peanuts compared with the tanks they are designed to take out.
The CDU/CSU had pushed for them throughout Merkel’s last two terms in office, but their smaller coalition partner the SPD blocked it every time. And when the SPD took power in 2021, they buried the subject altogether. The party’s pacifist wing – convinced that automated weapons will inevitably be used for aggression and that killer robots will run amok – overruled the more pragmatic Social Democrats, who pointed out the defensive value of drones and that, duh, the baddies already have them anyway.
Meanwhile, the Bundeswehr is celebrating baby steps. Last May, the Luftwaffe proudly announced “a premiere in the sky”: the start of training with five Israeli-made Heron TP drones. Training how to fly them, mind you – not to hit a target. Because while the Heron can be armed, the German version isn’t. No parliamentary mandate, no weapons.
Ironically, the German defence industry isn’t just good with ze Panzers. It has cutting-edge drone technology, too. The Munich-based company Helsing, which also has offices in London and Paris, is gearing up to deliver thousands of additional HX-2 strike drones for deployment in Ukraine. They are designed to hit artillery weapons, armoured vehicles and other military targets up to 100km away, and use AI to guide explosives and to dodge enemy jamming.
It doesn’t stop there. Underwater drones could soon also patrol and protect critical internet cables in the Baltic Sea. And in partnership with the French space start-up Loft Orbital, Helsing already monitors borders and troop movements via reconnaissance satellites. The idea is to pair reconnaissance and combat drones to create an intelligent barrier: one that blocks enemy forces while letting allies through.
In a recent interview with news agency dpa, Helsing’s co-founder, Gundbert Scherf, reckoned that within a year, such a “drone wall” could be deployed along Nato’s 3,000km eastern flank. His core argument is: “Autonomous systems are made for democracies. We value life; we all want to live a good life. I don’t believe our democracies can – or want to – fight a war of attrition that costs many lives.”
His co-founder, Torsten Reil, recently told the FT: “We can’t be naive about what’s happening. We have to be prepared. And the number one thing that we can do to protect our democracies is to deter.” Helsing, he insists, is focused on the best ways to keep “humans in the loop” in life-and-death decisions. Less a question for physics class, more an ethics one.
The company has just opened its first “Resilience Factory” in southern Germany, aiming at a monthly production capacity of more than 1,000 AI-enabled drones. Will the SPD – once again eyeing its part in a coalition – show the same level of determination? I wouldn’t bet my Walkman on it.
