Greenpeace exposes our defenselessness

Joachim Käppner

A “stupid and irresponsible” Greenpeace stunt has exposed the frightening vulnerability of German sports fans, said Joachim Käppner. Just before the kickoff at a European Championship match last month, an environmental activist flew into a Munich soccer stadium in a motorized paraglider emblazoned with the slogan “Kick out oil!”— a criticism of VW, one of the sponsors. The pilot lost control of the craft and hit overhead camera cables, sending debris onto the pitch and narrowly missing the stands before crashing in front of the penalty area. Two people were injured, and Greenpeace was widely condemned. Still, we can thank

the eco-group for inadvertently revealing the extreme vulnerability of sports stadiums to terrorist attacks from the air. Just imagine the carnage if a jihadist had used an explosives-laden paraglider to smash into the spectators from above. In such a scenario, the security services would have to decide in an instant whether to blow the aircraft out of the sky, a decision made more complicated by a 2006 court ruling that forbids our air force from shooting down a hijacked airliner heading for a government building or nuclear power plant. Greenpeace’s mishap shows that Germany needs a response plan—or much better surveillance.