Adversary Intelligence — 2026-09-17

German Military Counterintelligence Reports Chinese Drone Overflights of Bases and Rising Russian Sabotage Campaign

BLUFMAD's new statutory disclosure forces Germany to defend its counterintelligence posture in open debate precisely when base security threats from both Russia and China are compounding.

Germany's Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) said in its 2025 annual report, the first issued under a new statutory disclosure law, that Germany is a "priority reconnaissance target" for Russian intelligence and that hybrid threats have further escalated 1. MAD said the threat from paid "low-level agents" recruited to plant fires or photograph military sites has "significantly increased," citing Germany's NATO logistics role, Bundeswehr expansion, and new weapons systems as drivers, though it withheld comparative incident figures 1. Euromaidan Press linked the pattern to a bomb-laden drone found in August near a Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Leipzig/Halle airport, since traced to a Russian intelligence operative and a Belarusian national, and to two Bulgarians arrested in a September arson case near defense firm Rohde & Schwarz in Munich 2. MAD also attributed some drone overflights and unauthorized entries at Bundeswehr sites to Chinese intelligence services, which it said draw on parts of the Chinese diaspora, and flagged Bundeswehr personnel travel to Russia and Belarus that has drawn attention from those countries' security services 12.

Analysis
Germany's shift to statutory public disclosure, not the incidents themselves, is the operational change, putting MAD's threat picture into open political debate over Bundeswehr counterintelligence funding and vetting just as force expansion accelerates. The Leipzig/Halle bomb-drone, traced to a Russian intelligence operative and a Belarusian national, and the Munich arson arrests of two Bulgarians give the "low-level agent" warning its first concrete case linkage, moving the claim from assertion toward a documented pattern. MAD's withholding of comparative incident figures limits outside verification of the claimed scale increase, and reporting rests on MAD's own filing alone, with wire and secondary accounts converging on but not independently corroborating it. Naming Chinese intelligence alongside Russian services widens the base-security mandate MAD must now defend in public, and the disclosure itself doubles as an institutional case for expanded funding and staffing as the agency grows toward new domestic posts and a permanent presence in Lithuania.

3 sources

MAD: Bedrohung durch Sabotage hat „erheblich zugenommen“ - Tagesspiegel (dpa)
Chinese drones over German bases, paid saboteurs lighting fires for Russia—Germany's military spells out the new normal - Euromaidan Press
Jahresbericht MAD 2025: Schutz in Zeiten multipler Krisen - Bundeswehr.de (MAD - Bundesamt für den Militärischen Abschirmdienst)