How seven students unmasked Russia’s ‘drone motherships’

Over the past months, Northern Germany was plagued by a phenomenon resembling a modern ghost story. Heavy drones repeatedly appeared above critical infrastructure: chemical parks in Brunsbüttel, the naval base in Kiel, and even Munich Airport. These were not consumer quadcopters but military-grade drones with significant speed and range. Authorities were baffled: technically, these drones could not have flown directly from Russia (Kaliningrad) without being intercepted along the way.

If they didn’t come from land, they must have come from the sea. But from where?

The answer didn’t come from the Bundeswehr or intelligence agencies but from a team of seven students at the Axel Springer Academy of Journalism & Technology. Led by renowned Dutch OSINT specialist Henk van Ess, they conducted an investigation that redefined modern investigative journalism. Their project, titled "We Droned Back," is a masterclass in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and exposes a painful blind spot in NATO’s maritime security.

The data anomaly: "The purple marker"

The investigation began with a hypothesis arising from frustration with official silence. "The answers we received were identical," noted student Michèle Borcherding. Since the government remained tight-lipped, the students turned to the one source that doesn’t lie: raw data.

The team examined the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the transponder system that tracks ships’ positions. Using platforms like Global Fishing Watch and MarineTraffic, they filtered tens of thousands of movements in the North and Baltic Seas. They weren’t looking for regular shipping routes but anomalies.

What they found defied commercial logic. While global trade relies on efficiency - the shortest route from A to B - specific ships exhibited erratic behavior. On their digital maps, the students observed ships circling for days or zigzagging in strategically sensitive waters. The team described the pattern vividly: "As if a toddler had furiously scribbled with a purple marker on the map."

Mapping the shadow fleet

From the data analysis, three main suspects emerged: the HAV Dolphin, the HAV Snapper, and the Lauga. Although these ships sailed under flags of convenience (such as Antigua & Barbuda), their connections to Russia were undeniable.

The correlation between the ships’ movements and drone incidents was statistically significant and unlikely to be coincidental. The team documented 19 specific instances in which the ships' locations matched observations of hostile drones.

• The HAV Dolphin: In early May 2025, this ship spent ten days in the Kiel Bight. During that period, drones were detected on three separate days above German defense sites, just 25 kilometers away. The data revealed that the ship had recently spent nearly a month at the Pregol shipyard in Kaliningrad, a facility closely linked to the Russian military.
• The HAV Snapper: On May 16, this sister ship anchored off the coast of Schiermonnikoog. Just two hours later, a swarm of seven drones was observed above another Russian ship, the Lauga, which was sailing under police escort nearby.

The group of students - © Digital Digging

The Rosatom connection and the technology

The most alarming aspect of the revelation isn’t just the presence of the ships but the confirmation of their technological capability. Critics initially argued that civilian cargo ships would be unsuitable as launch platforms.

However, Van Ess’s team found the missing piece in a 2024 technical presentation by Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear energy company. The document detailed drones designed explicitly for ship-based launches, with an operational range of 200 kilometers—more than enough to cover the distances between the HAV ships in the North Sea and the observed drone incidents over the German mainland.

The ships function effectively as "motherships": inconspicuous civilian platforms that bring military technology into European borders. This is a textbook example of hybrid warfare, where the lines between military and civilian, and between war and peace, are deliberately blurred.

"Wir haben zurück gedrohnt": Innovation in the Field

Innovation didn’t stop at data analysis. When the team realized that digital tracking alone was insufficient to verify the cargo or crew, they took physical measures. When the HAV Dolphin unexpectedly left a French port, the students began a pursuit by car, driving 2,500 kilometers across the Netherlands to the Belgian coast.

There, they employed the same tactic as their adversaries. Using a consumer drone, they flew over the suspected spy ship to capture high-resolution images. "Wir haben zurück gedrohnt" ("We droned back"), the team declared.

The images confirmed what the data suggested: an entirely Russian crew on a ship officially unrelated to Russia. Suspicious antennas and deck configurations, non-standard for cargo ships of this type, were also observed.

A gap in European defense

The investigation by the Axel Springer Academy and Henk van Ess is more than a thrilling story; it’s a wake-up call for European security architecture. It demonstrates that motivated citizens, armed with public data and affordable technology, can uncover connections that government agencies miss or suppress due to diplomatic caution and bureaucratic inertia.

The HAV Dolphin was inspected three times by European authorities, but each inspection was superficial. Containers remained unopened, and the presence of "extra" officers was not investigated further. This suggests that current inspection protocols are inadequate given the reality of Russia’s shadow fleet.

While governments invest billions in defense systems, the threats sail openly off our coasts, disguised as innocent bulk carriers. It took seven students and one laptop to lift that smokescreen.