A physical protection system (PPS) aims to protect a system against adversarial attacks by deterrence, detection, delay, and response. PPSs have targeted the protection of various systems, each of which has its specific requirements. On the other hand, PPSs also share a large set of features that are implemented for each system. To reduce the development cost, reduce time‐to‐market, and increase the quality of systems, a large‐scale systematic reuse approach as defined by systems product line engineering (SPLE) can be applied. So far, PPS methods have mainly considered the systems engineering of single PPSs. In this paper, we report on our industrial experiences and lessons learned for adopting SPLE for PPSs. An explicit model‐based systems engineering approach is adopted in which the focus is on the formalized application of models in the overall systems engineering life cycle. Hereby, the presented approach adopts and integrates model‐based systems engineering, product line engineering, and the PPS method to provide a systematic large‐scale reuse approach for systems engineering of PPSs. We discuss the detailed steps of the approach and report on the lessons learned for adopting model‐based systems product line engineering for PPS.