Build defences, but avoid Putin's 'escalation trap', says German defence minister

Germany must improve its anti-drone defences, its defence minister said, but warned against a hasty response to airspace incursions by Russia which would risk falling into "Putin's escalation trap".

Boris Pistorius' remarks in an interview with Handelsblatt newspaper followed drone sightings at Munich Airport that cancelled dozens of flights and stranded over 10,000 passengers this weekend.

Authorities have yet to attribute blame, but officials have said Russia was responsible for dozens of recent aircraft incursions and sightings in the airspace of Ukraine's European allies.


"Putin knows Germany very, very well," Pistorius said of the Russian President, who was a KGB agent in East Germany in the 1980s.

"We mustn't fall into Putin's escalation trap," he added. "If we shot an aeroplane down, he would claim the airspace violation was just pilot error and we had shot down an innocent young man," he told Handelsblatt.

STATE ROLE IN DEFENCE COMPANIES

Germany needed to take an overview of all relevant threats, not just drone incursions, in order to draw links between seemingly unrelated events, he said.

"Say there are lots of forest fires or power cuts in several regions at the same time," he said. "All relevant data for assessing Germany's security situation must flow to a single point."

Germany should follow France in taking active state stewardship of important defence companies.

"Firms with key technologies need to be preserved," he said. "We need the state shares, I'm convinced of it: also to ensure that know-how and jobs are kept in Germany."

DECISION ON FCAS NEEDS TO COME SOON

Pistorius also warned that without a clear commitment by all three governments to the joint Franco-German-Spanish warplane project FCAS, Germany would withdraw.

"I'll talk with my counterparts as soon as there is a French government," he said. "The Chancellor and I are in full agreement that there needs to be a decision by the end of the year... Otherwise we will pull the plug."

He issued a pointed warning to Washington with respect to rumours of a "kill switch" in its F-35 warplane that would control how customers used it.

"If there were such limitations - of which there is no sign - U.S. industry would immediately look unreliable, and nobody would buy from them," he said.