The reported German move sits alongside earlier restrictions by other Western forces on Chinese-made devices at military sites. In 2018, the U.S. defence department banned the use of smartphones from Huawei and ZTE at military bases worldwide, citing security concerns.
German military units are withdrawing Chinese-made drones from service as quickly as possible, the newspaper Der Spiegel reported, after the aircraft were bought in recent years with limited bureaucratic oversight.
Western military forces have grown increasingly concerned that Chinese-made technology could pose a security risk and might be used to transmit sensitive information to Beijing.
Der Spiegel, which first reported the change, said local commanders had been allowed to buy the drones under a 2024 strategy. That strategy included a “white list” of approved systems, among them several made by DJI, the China-based company that is the world’s largest drone maker.
The paper said there is no central record of purchases by individual units. Because of that gap, it reported, the military has to impose a blanket ban.
A spokesperson told Reuters there is no blanket ban on systems from specific countries. The spokesperson said the decision rests on individual risk assessments for military, information-technology and data security.
The two accounts leave the scope of the measure in dispute: Der Spiegel described a service-wide withdrawal forced by incomplete purchasing records, while the spokesperson framed the policy as case-by-case review rather than a country ban.
American military officials have not identified a specific threat in that wider effort, which has also covered Chinese smart technology in vehicles, mobile phones and other devices that officials fear could be used to “spy” on their owners.
Der Spiegel did not, in the material available here, give a count of the drones, a timetable for the withdrawal, or the names of the units that bought them. What it did report is that the aircraft entered service through local purchases and are now being taken out of use as fast as possible.