The German Luftwaffe is aquiring three more Israeli long-range drones, with a total of six then being stationed in Schleswig-Holstein. Israel’s wars in Gaza and Iran make training for German crews more difficult.
The German Armed Forces are apparently planning to procure three more long-range Heron TP drones from Israel. To this end, the budget and defence committees in the Bundestag are to decide on a so-called 25 million euro bill. This is what the military-orientated magazine ‘Hartpunkt’ claims to have learnt from ‘well-informed circles’. According to this, the new drones would not be leased as before, but purchased. According to the report, the five Heron TPs already purchased by the Bundeswehr will for the long term also be bought.
Nothing is known about the financial scope of the new plan. Under the existing leasing contract, the Bundeswehr is paying the equivalent of around €200 million per aircraft. In addition, there is a contract for the procurement of 140 guided missiles, for which the Ministry of Defence is reportedly spending €43 million. The German government is keeping secret who was awarded the contract for the ammunition. The reason for this is consideration for the Israeli government, which is keeping the capabilities of its combat drones secret from the public.
Unlike the Heron TPs that have already been ordered and partially delivered, the new German acquisitions will not be used for aerial surveillance or combat missions, writes ‘Hartpunkt’. According to the report, the equipment will include systems for electro-magnetic reconnaissance of communication and radar systems. These enemy installations can then be attacked with other weapon systems.
The first weaponised Heron TP has already been stationed at Jagel Air Base in Schleswig-Holstein for a year – but allegedly without missiles or bombs, which have apparently not yet been delivered to the air force. In the meantime, the large aircraft has been integrated into the NATO operation ‘Baltic Sentry’ in the Baltic Sea. The military alliance wants to prevent the sabotage of submarine cables attributed to Russian units.
The main contractor for both the old and the new drone contract is the Bremen-based armaments division of Airbus. The aircraft come from the Israeli partner IAI, which is state-owned. The training of pilots and personnel to operate sensors and weapons technology was to take place at the Israeli air force base in Tel Nof, where the drones are stationed before being transferred to Germany.
Airbus will also take over the maintenance of the Israeli drones and carry out any repairs. To convert the leasing contracts into a purchase, the Bundeswehr wants to involve the German defence service provider Plath, reports ‘Hartpunkt’. This would serve to ‘ensure German sovereignty in the project’.
Six years ago, the Bundeswehr moved into an area at the Tel Nof base to station its drones in Israel. The co-operation operates under the name ‘Red Baron’. This honours the fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen, who shot down a three-digit number of enemy aircraft in the First World War. The name was chosen by the Israeli military, the German air force explained at the time.
A total of 60 crews were to be trained as part of the ‘Red Baron’ programme. They all come from the unarmed ‘Heron 1’ predecessor, with which the Bundeswehr had operated in Afghanistan and Mali. German drone soldiers also undergo firing training in Israel.
At the start of the Gaza war, the Bundeswehr temporarily handed its leased drones back to the Israeli air force. Flight training on the Heron TP in Tel Nof was therefore suspended and not resumed until April 2025. This was recently confirmed by the German Ministry of Defence in an answer to a parliamentary question from Left Party MP Lea Reisner.
Tel Nof is one of the most important facilities of the Israeli Air Force, and fighter jets and drones also take off from there for missions in Gaza, around 40 kilometres away. Following a retaliatory strike in response to the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah by an Israeli air strike in Beirut, Iran also attacked the base in Tel Nof with missiles in October 2024. The German government did not answer whether any destruction also affected the ‘Red Baron’ cooperation.
The war of aggression now launched by Israel against Iran could once again delay the training flights of German pilots. In any case, the ‘Red Baron’ project is progressing on the ground: theoretical training and training on an Airbus simulator have already been completely relocated to Germany, the Ministry of Defence has now announced.
Whoever names a joint program for strike drones ‘Red Baron’ is setting the tone: they are emulating a German fighter pilot from World War I. But that is by far not the only explosive aspect of the cooperation between the air forces of Germany and Israel. German drone pilots and weapons operators are being trained at a base in Israel that is central to the Gaza war. So, Bundeswehr personnel see daily from their container village how Israeli planes and drones take off for mass killings in the Gaza Strip and, after dozens of Palestinians have lost their lives each time, land again.
It is even possible that training flights of the German Air Force take place over areas occupied by Israel, which would amount to an indirect recognition of the occupation and thus contradict German foreign policy. In response to parliamentary inquiries, the Ministry of Defense has always stated that it relies on Israeli military to ensure that flight control does not direct them over the West Bank or Gaza.
In the meantime, essential parts of ‘Red Baron’ have been relocated to Germany — likely a consequence of the Gaza war. This probably also means that Israeli personnel have been assigned to Schleswig-Holstein for this purpose. So anyone who wants to protest against the war can do so at the arms division of Airbus in Bremen, or at the air force base in Jagel, where the killer drones from Israel are now also at home.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: The first German training course for the Heron TP started in Tel Nof in 2019 (Falk Bärwald/Bundeswehr).
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