Suddenly there were drones. Several unmanned flying objects circled over the University Hospital in Kiel on a Thursday evening in September last year. To this day, CEO Jens Scholz doesn’t know where they came from. The assumption is that they were supposed to spy on important facilities or at least unsettle the population. Drones were also spotted over a power plant and a submarine dockyard that evening.
This is called phase one Bundeswehrthat gray area between peace and war. There is no fighting yet, life continues as normal. But drones appear in the skytrain tracks are sabotaged, postal packages go up in flames. “We are in the middle of phase one,” says Scholz.