An unidentified drone spied on the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier of the British Royal Navy. According to the German newspaper Bild, on Friday morning, November 22, a suspicious object was spotted and reported as it was presumably watching over the aircraft carrier stationed near the port of Hamburg.
The drone had been following the ship for quite some time: the German police had been monitoring its movements and tried to take it down using an HP-47 portable jammer. Instead of making an emergency landing or returning to the pilot, the drone carried on with surveillance. Eventually, it disappeared somewhere near the Tollerort terminal which has been co-owned by China for about a year. At the end of the day, neither the UAV nor its operator were found.
Read more: Bundeswehr Admits There's No Solution to russian Drones Spying German Military Bases
Illustrative video of the HHLA Container Terminal Tollerort, Hamburg, Germany:
This is not the first time that drones of unknown origin have been spotted over strategically important facilities or assets in Germany. Similar incidents also happened in other NATO or EU member states.
For example, earlier this week, The War Zone reported sightings of several unmanned aerial systems over Lakenheath airbase in the UK on November 20; according to the U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces in Africa, "the number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration."
Unconfirmed data suggests that F-15E Strike Eagles were raised to intercept the drones. Currently, the airbase is home to units of the U.S. Air Force and their F-15E, F-35 fighters. A few days prior to the incident, unknown drones were observed over the U.S. Army Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.
It remains unknown where these mysterious drones, that are increasingly being spotted over defense facilities in the U.S. and Europe, come from. There are justified warnings those might be Russian or Chinese, though in the case of the U.S., it also could be tests of some domestic secret developments, albeit with a much lower probability.
Against this background, protecting European and American facilities from spy drones remains a pressing matter and a problem for some countries: sometimes, they simply lack anti-drone equipment, in more difficult cases face bureaucratic or legislative restrictions or even protests from local residents.
As a case in point, earlier Defense Express covered how Bundeswehr basically admitted they have no solution to russian drones spying on German military bases.
Read more: Again, russian Spy Drones Fly Over Germany Freely, Looking At Nuclear and Chemical Plants
