The Leipzig drone bomb marks a dangerous escalation for Europe

The armed drone found at Leipzig airport on Wednesday may not have exploded, but the fact that it got inside the perimeter, close to Ukrainian cargo planes, raises obvious concerns for the security of international aviation.Though the identity of the culprits is unknown, the initial evidence points firmly towards a Russian-orchestrated plot. It is the first time that a drone with explosives has been found in Europe far from the Ukrainian border.Photographs published by German newspapers show a quadcopter, a design familiar from the Ukraine war, with a package attached. It lies a few meters short of a Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane, with its easily identifiable yellow and blue trim livery.Police from the German state of Saxony confirmed that the drone was “carrying an unknown explosive device” discovered by an employee in the “secure cargo flight operations area” near the airport’s southern runway.German media reported the attached bomb was made of PETN and semtex plastic explosive – the second of the two, the munition that exploded inside Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. But the bomb attached to the drone did not explode, because the detonator was faulty.A local newspaper, Leipziger Volkszeitung, said police discovered as much as 800g of explosive. This would be “enough to do considerable damage” to a plane, according to Trevor Lawrence, an explosives expert with Cranfield University, not least because “aeroplane bodies are ridiculously thin, often only 3mm aluminium”.Whether the explosive was specifically semtex, invented in the Czech Republic, or from another country may not have been determined. But any type of plastic explosive has typically only been available to militaries or well-established terror groups, not to reckless amateur drone pilots messing around.A second unidentified flying object, that could well have been another drone, also collided with a DHL cargo plane in the aftermath of the first incident several hundred meters above the ground. The cargo plane only sustained minor damage.Leipzig airport is a sensitive site, the European base of Ukrainian Antonov jets, used for heavy cargo. The airport is also used by Nato and the German military for transport, as well as being a DHL hub, and the Ukrainian planes suggest it may also have been a node for supplies to Kyiv.Nato would only say it was aware of the incident on Wednesday, though it is eyecatching that the western alliance appears to have not been able to prevent drones from flying into and over a strategic airport.It is not the first time Leipzig airport has been involved in a dangerous incident. A fire bomb, posted via DHL, exploded at the airport in July 2024 while a second travelled to the UK and caught fire at a warehouse in Birmingham. Two similar packages were also found in Poland.A subsequent pan-European investigation identified 22 suspects in Lithuania and Poland who are suspected of having been employed by Russian intelligence. The investigation found perpetrators were recruited and given instructions online, and frequently paid in cryptocurrency, their knowledge of the full plot apparently limited.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia has also been behind a string of drone incursions into Europe over the past year, some more blatant than others. Around 20 unarmed Russian delta wing Gebera drones crossed into Poland last September, forcing a major alert, with people in two of the country’s eastern provinces told to shelter indoors.An analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) thinktank concluded last month that the Kremlin was behind a concerted drone surveillance campaign that targeted the US air base at RAF Lakenheath and other key military sites in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.In the first case, Nato jets struggled to shoot down the incoming drones, most of which eventually crashed or lost power and glided to the ground. In the second, western militaries struggled to work out who were the culprits, failing to capture any of the drones or react to the surveillance efforts promptly.Russia, in sum, has so far been able to conduct other fire bomb operations, as well as drone harassment and surveillance campaigns with relative impunity. Moscow is already subject to a wide range of sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine, and it is likely to believe that the west has little more it is willing to punish the country with.“A drone carrying a charge with a detonator that failed is a different proposition to what we have seen before,” said Charlie Edwards, a senior fellow with the IISS thinktank, adding ominously: “It is likely, though not yet certain, that this was intended to function rather than to be found.”