Project Stachelschwein

Stachelschwein DDS is the decentralised drone shield for Germany. It is the open system that ties cheap sensors and cheap interceptor drones into air cover that reaches everywhere, not just the airports.

• Every suitable building gets a sensor on the roof.
• Every suitable building gets a defence drone with explosive-free capture gear, nets for example.
• All nodes run on one shared platform.

Five million sensors and interceptors protecting German airspace together.

On top of that, Stachelschwein adds the next layer: the fire brigade and the federal agency for technical relief get longer-reaching sensors and stronger interceptors. The system is modular from the first day and built so it can later plug into the command and information structures of the Bundeswehr and NATO.

Why Stachelschwein?

Bottom-up. Fast. Cheap. Area cover, not one airport.

The platform is open to plug-and-play across sensor and drone systems. Only two things are developed centrally and jointly: the standardised protocol and the software that fuses sensor data and hands out interception tasks.

Attack waves of ten thousand drones are no longer theory. No single expensive missile answers that. Mass answers it, the kind you can roll out in weeks instead of parliamentary terms.

We are not the manufacturer, at least not so far. We start the thing and carry the idea. Anyone who wants to build is welcome. Fast coordination by state agencies is expressly wanted.

We are not waiting for a decision.

We are citizens who consider a resilient air defence infrastructure necessary, so we are starting to build it. Defence only. No selling of weapon systems. Within the law.

• We install from today.
• We arm nothing before it is agreed with the authorities.
• We create readiness. In an emergency the button belongs to whoever is authorised to press it.

That way the coverage exists before the rules are finished. The responsibilities can grow alongside it.

Timeline

System design

from 7 September 2026

First installations

passive nodes, from today

Flight tests and arming

only with regulatory clearance

Emergency doctrine

in the drawer, prepared from today

Five million systems

as fast as production carries

Watch it before there is hardware.

A simulation of the system runs inside Wunderglobe. We took Frankfurt, because the city already stands there as a model: every suitable roof carries a Stachelschwein sensor, and you start an attack wave with a button. Nothing about it is random. It is a simulator, built so you can understand the system and steer it.

What you watch is the sequence from the system design. Several sensors hear the same noise. The command layer triangulates a track from those bearings. It clears ten coordinated interceptors for launch, so there is redundancy when one fails. The ten box the attacker in and catch it with a net. Then it says the catch worked, and that is where we stop: what happens to a captured drone afterwards is something we have not settled ourselves.

If you would rather press nothing, take Stachelschwein and Chill. The camera flies on its own, and small explainer cards point a line at whatever is happening.

Where

wunderglobe.com/play, in the menu under PLAY GAMES

What

SIM STACHELSCHWEIN, Frankfurt scenario

Demo

Stachelschwein and Chill

The simulation is not a showpiece next to the project. It is how we develop the structure: whatever cannot be modelled cleanly in the simulator is not finished thinking on the roof either.

The stack is in the open.

The project surface lives at wunderglobe.com/stachelschwein: scanner, system, parts catalogue, supply chain, home test. The software and protocol part has its own public repository: Stachelschwein Drone Defense System on GitHub. Anyone may read it. It holds the protocol sketch, the minimum requirements for sensor and interceptor nodes, and the system design.

Only the standardised part is developed centrally: four messages carry the whole sequence, from detection through the track and the launch clearance to the outcome. Bring a camera, a microphone array, a radar or an interceptor drone, write an adapter against those messages, and you are part of the network.

The home of the idea stays here in Wunderglobe. GitHub holds the code. The same shield, in the McGrinsey magazine: Project Stachelschwein.

Stachelschwein DDS is the drone shield for Germany.