Legal options for civil companies

What awaits you in this lesson

Which laws and regulations apply .
Which distances from particular areas are legally permitted.
Which measures are legally permitted for you and which are not.

First of all:

In Germany, responsibility for countering the danger posed by drones is divided: the Bundeswehr is responsible for military properties, the Federal Police for commercial airports, and the state police forces for everything else. For an industrial or commercial site this means there is no standing, permanently available responsibility for the airspace above a company site. The police act when they are called, and in doing so they depend on observations made within the company.

The following laws and regulations are relevant to this lesson:

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 ▾

Governs how and where flights may take place, including the categories and subcategories (A1, A2, A3).

Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/945 ▾

Governs what the device itself must be like, in particular the class labels C0 to C6.

Air Traffic Regulations (LuftVO), in particular Section 21h ▾

Governs the national geographical prohibited and restricted zones. This is where the most important protection for company sites lies.

Aviation Act (LuftVG), Sections 43 and 62 ▾

Governs the insurance obligation as well as criminal offences, such as unauthorised take-off in a flight restriction zone.

Aviation Security Act (LuftSiG) ▾

Governs the counter-drone powers of state bodies. It creates no powers for private parties.

The protection your site already enjoys

In legal terms, a company site is not unprotected. Section 21h(3) of the Air Traffic Regulations defines geographical zones applying nationwide in which drone operations are prohibited or permitted only with the consent of the party holding the right of access. All distances stated are lateral distances.

A restricted area of 100 metres applies to industrial installations and to installations for energy generation and distribution. Flying there is permitted only with the operator's consent. An overflight without consent is already a legal breach, regardless of what the pilot intends.

Two conclusions

First: your position is considerably stronger than most managers assume. Withholding the operator's consent is an effective step that the rules expressly provide for.
Second: these zones work only against someone who abides by the law. They are no substitute for detection.

Protected areas under Section 21h LuftVO

In legal terms your site is not unprotected. Click on a protected object to see the applicable minimum distance and any exceptions. All distances are lateral distances.

Select a protected object to display the distance and any exceptions.

Important: if your site is an industrial installation or an energy installation, you yourself are the body that can consent to an overflight. An overflight without your consent is already a legal breach. These zones do, however, work only against someone who abides by the law. They are no substitute for detection.

What is not allowed

For private companies the following is not allowed without exception: intercepting a drone with nets, capture devices or other drones, disrupting the control or navigation link (jamming), taking over the controls (spoofing), destroying it by any means whatsoever, and shooting at it.

This restriction applies regardless of whether the property is your own, whether the equipment was acquired legally, whether the drone is hovering directly above your own hall and whether the operator considers their rights to be infringed.

Remember: there is no right of self-defence against drones that entitles a company to act. On this question, your own property ends at the ground.

Why is countering drones reserved to the state?

In legal terms a drone is an aircraft. Interfering with its flight is an interference with aviation security and is reserved to the state's monopoly on the use of force.

Who is liable for a device that has been brought down?

A device that has been brought down falls to the ground. The falling debris can hit third parties, vehicles or installations. Liability lies with whoever brought it down, not with the pilot.

Why are jammers not permitted?

Jammers do not work selectively. They interfere with mobile networks, Wi-Fi, company radio and navigation services in the surrounding area and are already impermissible under telecommunications law.

Why is it not for site security to decide?

Without identification it is unknown who is flying there: a surveyor, an emergency service, a neighbour or an attacker. That distinction is drawn by a public authority, not by site security.

What is allowed

Even so, the restriction leaves you room to act. That room is not a leftover; it is the actual field of work for a company.

Adjacent legal requirements when procuring equipment

Anyone procuring technology runs into three areas of law outside aviation law that are rarely mentioned in vendor documentation. The rule to remember: passive is legally simple. Active becomes demanding. Any active effect is prohibited.

Even the legally permitted methods come with certain requirements:

Detecting ▾

Passive methods such as acoustic sensors, passive radio detection and optical observation are permitted. Active methods such as radar are likewise permitted but are subject to additional requirements.

Documenting ▾

Time, duration, flight path, behaviour, repetitions and, where available, image material. The documentation is the basis of any later investigation and is often the only thing a company can supply.

Reporting ▾

To the police, internally to the responsible unit and, for operators of critical infrastructure, additionally in line with the applicable reporting obligations.

Building and organising ▾

Visual screening at sensitive areas, moving processes worth protecting into enclosed spaces, roofing over outdoor storage, adjusting guard patrol rhythms and defining responsibility within the company.

Frequency law (with active radar) ▾

A radar transmits actively and therefore requires a frequency assignment from the Federal Network Agency. Passive sensors do not transmit and are not affected by this.

Data protection (with cameras) ▾

Cameras used for drone observation inevitably capture the surrounding area. The same requirements apply as for any video surveillance: purpose limitation, necessity, signage, deletion periods and involvement of the employee representative body.

Claims against the drone operator

Once the person responsible has been identified, an observation is not without consequences. Breaches of the Air Traffic Regulations, such as flying over an industrial installation without the operator's consent, are punishable as an administrative offence with a fine of up to 50,000 euros. Possible criminal offences include taking off in a flight restriction zone, violating the most intimate personal sphere by taking pictures, and data espionage. Under civil law there are claims for injunctive relief, damages and deletion of recordings.

Enforcing these claims requires the identity of the person responsible, which in practice is the real hurdle. This is what makes observation valuable: without solid documentation there is no starting point for an investigation.

Reporting route and preparation

Report every observation that cannot clearly be attributed to an announced and approved flight, and in particular every repetition. Internally to the designated unit (site security or the security officer), externally to the police, and in an acute situation via the emergency number.

Frequently overlooked: before reporting, it must be clear which of your own flights have been announced. The roofer with a permit and the surveyor working for the neighbouring company trigger the same observation as an attacker and account for most false reports.

Preview · Next lesson

Lesson 4 — Options for drone detection

And the limits of detection

After the technology and the law, we now turn to practice: how do you actually detect a drone – and why is there no single perfect sensor for the job? You will learn that every method measures something different and that each one has a hard limit beyond which it sees nothing at all.

What awaits you:

Four detection layers compared. Acoustics, radar, passive radio detection as well as optics and thermal imaging, each with its strength and its clear limit.
Why four sensors do not yet make a system, and how only the fusion layer, with a confirmation rule and a cooperative filter, produces a genuine situational picture.
Why detection systems usually fail, not because of the technology, but because of the false-alarm load and a lack of organisation.
The sensor you already have, the human being: what they can do, what no sensor achieves, and how an observation becomes usable.
The reporting scheme: six fields for recording every observation properly, plus an honest look at what you will not notice.

“A site that operates only one method does not have a detection system, it has a single alarm device with known blind spots.”