Europe must do more to guard its airports from Russian drones

A military-grade FPV drone carrying 800 grams of plastic explosive reached a fuelled Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig-Halle airport; catastrophe was avoided only because the bomb fell off. The drone used SIM cards and 5G rather than radio control, defeating standard detection, and investigators reportedly linked DNA evidence to an earlier GRU-attributed parcel-bomb plot. Europe needs multilayered detection and clear interception protocols, but jamming, debris and dense airport environments make defence intrinsically difficult.