Dead Drop: November 15 - 21

LICENSE TO TINKER – UPDATE: In August, we reported that Germany’s cabinet had approved a bill to give the country’s spies permission to, well, spy. The Guardian noted at the time that it still needed parliament’s blessing. It has that blessing now. And according to AFP, the Bundestag voted on Friday to let the BND (the country’s foreign intelligence service) run covert operations abroad. Those include sabotage and cyberattacks against adversaries. The domestic security service, the BfV, gets more powers too, though its role at home stays narrower. Officials have floated some creative uses for the BND. The Record reports they include slipping faulty components into hostile deliveries and hacking the IT systems of drone factories and chemical weapons labs. BND chief Martin Jäger has warned that Moscow is waging a “shadow war” on Germany with drones, sabotage and disinformation. Critics on the left say the law erodes the postwar wall between spies and police, a wall Germany built for very good historical reasons. For years, insiders called the BND the vegetarian of the intelligence world but it looks to us like steak is now on the menu.

SHELTER SKELTER: U.S. personnel at RAF Lakenheath, the Air Force’s big fighter base in Suffolk, England, got an unsettling message last Friday evening. The alert carried the words “REAL WORLD” in red capital letters at the top and reportedly told them to “seek the nearest shelter-in-place room,” according to Sky News. The cause was “suspected unauthorized drone activity.” An Air Force spokesperson later said no personnel, aircraft or infrastructure were affected. The local MP said the incident was resolved and posed no threat to the public. Nobody has said how many drones there were, who was flying them or what type they were, as The Aviationist points out. While that means we don’t know much right now, we do know that Lakenheath has been here before. In November 2024, mysterious drones over the base set off a weeks-long investigation and brought in British counter-drone troops, as The War Zone reported at the time. The operators were never identified. Security may have good reason to be jumpy this time since the alert came days after the Air Force moved aircraft away from other British bases over a reported Iranian threat. While the alert was stamped REAL WORLD whether there were real drones flying Friday night remains unconfirmed.