1OCT

German federal police buy anti-drone kit

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15:21UTC

Germany's Bundespolizei bought drone detection and defeat equipment from an Austrian and a British firm, with no competition and no published value.

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TechnologyAssessed

Key takeaway

Germany's federal police bought anti-drone equipment from Austrian and British firms without a competition.

Germany's federal police, the Bundespolizei, bought drone detection and defeat equipment in two lots from EW Drone Passion of Austria and SteelRock Technologies of Britain, according to TED contract award notices 622940-2026 and 623227-2026, published on 10 September⁠¹. Neither lot was opened to other bidders, and neither notice publishes a value.

The Bundespolizei guards Germany's borders, its railways and its largest airports, where a single drone sighting can stop flights. Detection equipment finds and tracks a drone; defeat equipment stops it, usually by jamming its radio link or seizing its controls. The two notices do not say which firm supplied which part, or how many sites the kit will cover.

German counter-drone protection has so far run on two tracks. In May Rheinmetall and Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership to defend civilian infrastructure against drones. The Bundespolizei award is the state buying for the sites it polices itself, from two foreign suppliers rather than a German one.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Germany's federal police, the Bundespolizei, protect the country's borders, its railways and its biggest airports. Drones flying near an airport can force it to stop flights for hours. The police have now bought two kinds of equipment. One finds and tracks drones. The other stops them, usually by blocking the radio signal between a drone and its pilot. The equipment comes from a company in Austria and one in Britain. The government did not ask other firms to bid and has not said what it paid.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

In Germany the federal police, not the armed forces, guard borders, railways and major airports in peacetime. Counter-drone money for those sites therefore runs through the Interior Ministry's budget and its own procurement office.

Defeat equipment usually works by jamming or taking over a drone's radio link. Using it near airports and railways is a police matter under civilian law, which steers the buying towards specialist suppliers of portable systems rather than military integrators.

What could happen next?

Risk
Separate police and military counter-drone systems may not share target data during an incident at an airport or base.
Opportunity
Small foreign specialists can win German federal security work without a German partner.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Germany's domestic counter-drone work has run on separate tracks before: Rheinmetall and Deutsche Telekom offered civilian infrastructure protection in May while the Bundeswehr pursued military systems. The Bundespolizei award adds a third buyer with its own supplier list.

Counter-parallel: In July Germany's LARUS drone programme took a US$30m order of AeroVironment Puma systems through NATO's procurement agency (ID:4947). The military side used a shared NATO route; the police award stayed inside a national ministry with its own supplier choice.

Neither notice publishes a value, so the Bundestag and the public cannot weigh the cost of protecting police-guarded sites against the far larger military programmes.

For SteelRock, a German federal award after Brexit shows that British firms can still win EU public contracts, through the same notices that bind EU suppliers.

Consensus view: Rheinmetall's August demonstration at Timber Express 2026, where Hensoldt's Twinvis passive radar fed a Skynex gun battery through the Skymaster command system, shows German primes selling heavy, integrated air defence. That is the military answer to drones over Germany.

Counter-view: The Beschaffungsamt des BMI, the Federal Interior Ministry's procurement office, bought something lighter for police use, from two niche firms. A police force needs kit that can be carried to an airport perimeter or a railway yard, and a gun battery has no place there.

Key tension: Whether Germany ends up with two counter-drone systems, police and military, that cannot see each other's tracks.

First Reported In

Update #18 · Four EU states skip tenders on drone defence

Tenders Electronic Daily· 1 Oct 2026

Read original →

Different Perspectives

Israel Defense Forces (Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir)

The IDF finalised a new Unmanned Systems and Artificial Intelligence Branch on 10 September, with full inauguration expected by early December. Israel is reorganising its forces around drones while Israeli suppliers pass into foreign hands: US-listed Ondas bought the fuze maker GATE on 14 September.

EHang (chairman and chief executive Huazhi Hu)

EHang withdrew its 600 million yuan revenue guidance on 25 August, blaming a more cautious Chinese regulator after industry air incidents. China's leading pilotless-aircraft maker now seeks first approvals in Sri Lanka and Thailand while US tariffs and FCC rules shut Chinese parts out of allied supply chains.

DroneShield

The Australian firm won one of ten Domestic Shield ceilings, $500m, on 29 September, while its FY2027-and-beyond committed revenue stood at A$46m. Its own filing warns investors that the US award may never turn into orders.

Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War

In a speech at Quantico on 30 September Hegseth announced AUTOWARCOM, a four-star drone command targeted for 1 October 2027 if Congress agrees, and called Drone Dominance and JIATF-401 a good start. He wants one command with its own budget to buy at the scale those two efforts have not reached.

Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA)

A DAPA-chaired committee approved a 2.16 trillion won domestic programme on 15 September for an army vertical take-off reconnaissance drone, running from 2027 to 2036. Seoul is choosing slow domestic development over urgent imports for its divisional surveillance.

Taiwan's Executive Yuan (Cabinet)

After the Legislative Yuan voted 60 to 50 on 27 August for a baseline of NT$40bn a year, in principle, for domestic drones and rejected its special budget, the Cabinet said on 30 August it would expedite funding and indicated it would co-sign the act. Taipei gets a statutory domestic market but loses a ring-fenced multi-year fund.