My sense is that people asking for proof that the airport drone incidents are based on real objects crossing over the airports get accused of being Russian apologists.
Copenhagen airport closure due to reported drone activity
- Thread starter Kyle Ferriter
- Start date
TinFoilHat
Member
Not sure. But if the drones in Poland were not shot down would you say they were planes being misidentifed as drones?
We have multiple Russian ships off the coast of Denmark. The real question is why isn't the military reading Metabunk we could have cleared up all this confusion of ZERO drone incursions in Denmark,right?
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/01/nx-s...send-troops-to-denmark-for-eu-leaders-meeting
Oh year, I was called Russia Today employee on Reddit, the thread deleted and banned for 7 days - free speech on Reddit is not a thing.
Gary C
Senior Member.
No, I know the difference. The confusion is only being exacerbated if media reports are just throwing out the word "drone" and not putting any of these reports in context. That's why I asked.
Poland borders an active war zone and these are not the first Russian incursions into their airspace. The Poles appear to be managing well enough.
Mendel
Senior Member.
Yes. Because all long-range Russian shipping to St Petersburg (the closest port to Moscow) must pass Denmark. Including their unflagged crude oil tankers.
This is business as usual, for people acquainted with European geography.
Every redditor, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
Kyle Ferriter
Senior Member.
As far as I can tell, Russia is mainly using these "shadow" ships for smuggling, to evade sanctions, or just to make it harder to monitor what's going in and out of their territory. This particular ship was already seized previously for similar reasons. Using them for launching air attacks against NATO nations would be a major line to cross that I doubt they want to cross.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2j1gynjddoExternal Quote:
The suspicion seems to be based on it being a smuggling ship used by Russia, and it being relatively nearby around the time of the CPH shutdown. But all ships departing from Russian Baltic Sea coasts must pass close by Denmark, it is unavoidable. (edit: @Mendel beat me to it) I'm having trouble locating a past track for the ship but this article says it was ~50 nautical miles south of Copenhagen on 22 Sep.
https://gcaptain.com/sanctioned-tanker-captain-arrested-in-france-as-danish-drone-mystery-deepens/External Quote:
50 nautical miles south of Copenhagen is the passageway on the way to the Great Belt channel large cargo ships must take to leave the Baltic Sea to the North Sea and onwards to the Atlantic. I haven't seen anything claiming it deviated from a standard path for these cargo ships.
(background image is just the latest grab from https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:13.1/centery:55.8/zoom:7)
At least the military was flying with ADS-B on this time. Last week they were apparently flying all over the country with no location broadcasting on, since it was confirmed they had flown in particular areas in particular time windows, yet nothing showed up on ADSB Exchange.
Mendel
Senior Member.
No, because they don't have navigation lights.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
And they would not be reported as hovering for hours like Betelgeuse does (and the other stars and planets do), and video taken and shared with the media of online would not be identifiable as planes, both by appearance and by checking to see that there is a plane right there at the right time flying in the right direction.
We know drones exist, and are used by various actors to overfly territory where they have no business being.
But we also know that "drone flaps" are now a thing, where somebody reports a mundane object as a drone, then people get excited and go looking for drones, and being primed to interpret what they do not recognize while looking at the sky, believe they are seeing drones. Then somebody has the bright idea of sending up drones to look for the mystery drones, creating more drone sightings! And of course some people want to see their name in the newspaper and make up a story. We have seen this happen in recent years with drones, and historically for UFOs, creepy clowns, etc.
The trick is telling one from the other. The first is a potentially dangerous situation that needs to be dealt with by authorities, the second would be best ignored as the more attention it is given, the longer it will last.
It is probably not possible to be sure there are no drones (other than consumer drones, which are everywhere, and police/military drones that might be used to hunt for the reported mystery drones) during a flap -- but we know what a flap looks like -- most notably, the complete lack of supporting evidence other than obvious images of planes and stars and helicopters and other stuff that is NOT a mystery drone. That's what we saw in NJ, it is NOT what we saw in Poland (where pretty good evidence in the form of downed drones exists!), but does seem to be what we are seeing in Denmark et al.
TinFoilHat
Member
https://maritime-executive.com/article/russian-warship-was-loitering-off-denmark-during-drone-attacks#:~:text=Aleksandr Shabalin (Russian MOD file,Danish airports and military sites.
Russian warship.
Article: After a coordinated drone raid shut down Copenhagen Airport and grounded dozens of flights, investigators' attention quickly turned to possible maritime launch pads. Three Russia-linked vessels were in the general vicinity during or just after the attacks, and one of them appeared to have slowed down in order to time its arrival in the Oresund, just a few cables away from the airport. But a fourth vessel has also attracted attention: a Russian amphib, which has been loitering at the edge of Danish territorial seas for days.
Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet first broke the news of the vessel's presence on Thursday. Using a chartered helicopter, the outlet's reporter flew out to observe the Ropucha-class landing ship Aleksandr Shabalin at a position off the coast of Langeland, an island at the southern entrance to the Great Belt. Shabalin was navigating with her AIS off, as is common for warships.
According to the outlet, Shabalin has been in the area for days, during a time period of intense drone activity at Danish airports and military sites.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
Would it not be normal that Russian warships would use that channel? Sincere question, my knowledge of shipping routes is poor! ^_^
TinFoilHat
Member
Ok so that would seem like a great way to blend in military drones with civilian aircraft, all you need to do is have navigation lights. Hiding in plain sight.
TinFoilHat
Member
Aleksandr Shabalin, was observed near Denmark with its tracking system (AIS) off during recent drone attacks on Danish facilities, raising suspicions that it may have been involved in coordinating or launching the drones as part of a "hybrid attack".
Turning off your tracking system is normal when you don't want to be tracked off the coast of Denmark.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
The article says that two things were true simultaniously. That's not evidence that they are causally linked. Coincident things may coincide purely out of coincidence.
And please follow the posting guidelines regarding the no-click policy.
MyMatesBrainwashed
Senior Member
Depends who identified them as drones.
Pretty sure those drones were detected and identified via means other than just looking at lights in the dark.
And not shooting them down wouldn't mean they weren't drones.
TinFoilHat
Member
Correct it can be true that drones are being observed and planes are being misidentifed as drones. The drones need a place to take off and land, a Russian war ship or Russian civilian ship makes perfect sense and needs to be taken into account.
Kyle Ferriter
Senior Member.
They would not blend in. Drones large enough to resemble manned aircraft and stay in flight for hours would be easily detected on airspace surveillance systems, and differentiated from other known aircraft. They would only blend in to the casual observer who looks up at the sky and sees lights with their eyes. There are very long range surveillance systems all over this area including onboard NATO vessels which are deployed in both the Baltic and North seas. The radar systems used on these sorts of vessels can see hundreds of miles. Flying large long-range drones dozens or hundreds of miles from offshore into highly monitored airport airspaces, and then loitering there for hours, would be easily detected, not merely by a handful of people briefly seeing lights in the sky with their eyes.
gargamel
Senior Member
They were definitely not spotted as lights, let alone with a full set of position lights and strobes? Come on, man... When these things have been tracked, targeted and engaged it is radar. Visually only during the day, but daytime raids are rare-ish.
There are thousands of clips of these things, day and night, and all times in between. They are colored dull gray or black, so somewhat visible during daylight hours against a bright-ish sky, if close enough, but pretty much invisible at night.
Their engines can be heard though ("flying lawnmower" two-stroke for Geran and Gerbera, the typical whine of a tiny jet for Geran-2, think small model turbines á la JetCat). Not that targeting is done by sound really, but all the millions of people familiar with these drones mainly know them by the sound they make.
Again, they don't have lights, they don't loiter around for hours on end, and they are always super easy to track with radar. In fact, during any single raid (which is pretty much nightly, as in every night) the monitoring systems utilized by Ukraine, big thanks to NATO ISR, can track them individually, even in their hundreds, as soon as they gain some altitude after launch.
Nothing in this Danish thing suggests any similarity whatsoever with these kamikaze drones and their unarmed decoy companions from the Ukrainian conflict.
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TinFoilHat
Member
Correct these drones were detected by the military. And military versions of smaller drones can still have lights to blend in with civilian drones with lights.
per Reuters:
Unidentified drones were observed near military installations in Denmark overnight, the Armed Forces said on Saturday, following several drone incursions near airports and critical infrastructure this week.
"The Danish Defence can confirm that drones were observed at several of the Danish Defence's locations last night. Several capabilities were deployed," a spokesperson said in an email to Reuters.
TinFoilHat
Member
That's correct. The EU is now going to implement a "Drone Wall" to help detect and neutralize these smaller drones that were observed in Denmark.
TinFoilHat
Member
The EU is not implementing drone detection and counter measures because of people reporting normal planes as drones. The EU is making these changes because actual drones are being observed.
jarlrmai
Senior Member.
There is no material evidence of that.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that these things are true of the current drone sighting excitement in Denmark/etc...? Or are you speaking of the drone warfare in Ukraine/Russia, which has slopped a bit into Poland?
JMartJr
Senior Member.
I'd agree, while noting that the difference is that, to date, there is only evidence of the former in Denmark.
Drones only need a place to take off and land if they exist! IF it were established that mystery drones a re flying over Denmark, and that they were Russian, then a Russian ship would be reasonable candidate for their "home base." But unless there are shown to be drones, the presence of ships is not relevant.
(There will likely be more than usual skepticism of the "mother ship" claim since it mirrors a similar claim about an Iranian ship off the coast of the US during the NJ drone flap, in which the presence of drones was never established, and so no reasonable connection to a claimed Iranian mother ship was ever established... when the tropes from an earlier false flap start being repeated, folks are going to be leery.)
Kyle Ferriter
Senior Member.
They are planning a drone wall because of the rapid expansion of wartime drone use in Russia and Ukraine, and the possibility of either intentional or accidental flights of those drones into areas they should not be in, such as has been actually confirmed in Poland and Belarus, which resulted in sensor detections and actual physical shoot-downs of those drones.
Enhanced drone detection and a "drone wall" was already being planned prior to Sept 22. Please stop asserting (without evidence) that there have been military drones concretely identified in Denmark since Sept 22, or that NATO/EU talks about reinforcing their airspaces is due to confirmed foreign drone incursions into Denmark since Sept 22.
https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...drone-wall-protect-against-russia-2025-09-18/
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/27/rus...o-countries-announce-border-defense-plan.html
https://defensescoop.com/2025/06/18/estonia-drone-wall-border-russia-2027/
gargamel
Senior Member
I apologize if I was unclear.
My point was that the /actual/ drones are what they are. Easily tracked and indeed shot down if need be. That goes for both all the Russian ones in Ukraine and on occasion adjacent airspaces, and the ones in eg Norway (Oslo, two cases of consumer drones flown in restricted airspace over the past week or so, police tracked them down and found the owners/"pilots" in a near instant).
The /alleged/ drones in Denmark etc do not match these actual, confirmed ones in any way, none of the characteristics actually match (well, except "something in the air" I guess...)
In fact, thus far, as soon as any tangible data was available these "phantom" drones have been proven to be planes, helos, stars etc. Misidentified. And to date all points to the "flap" being the result of what can best be described as mass delusion (as "hysteria" is the wrong term, pointed out so well by a previous contributor)
My point was that the /actual/ drones are what they are. Easily tracked and indeed shot down if need be. That goes for both all the Russian ones in Ukraine and on occasion adjacent airspaces, and the ones in eg Norway (Oslo, two cases of consumer drones flown in restricted airspace over the past week or so, police tracked them down and found the owners/"pilots" in a near instant).
The /alleged/ drones in Denmark etc do not match these actual, confirmed ones in any way, none of the characteristics actually match (well, except "something in the air" I guess...)
In fact, thus far, as soon as any tangible data was available these "phantom" drones have been proven to be planes, helos, stars etc. Misidentified. And to date all points to the "flap" being the result of what can best be described as mass delusion (as "hysteria" is the wrong term, pointed out so well by a previous contributor)
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Mendel
Senior Member.
How do they know the ship had been in the area for days, when its transponder was off? Do they have sources and confirmation?
Civilian aircraft also have transponders. Unknown aircraft crossing a border that have no transponder and don't respond to radio trigger a fighter intercept. The navigation lights would help the fighters find them faster, so that's nice.
It also means any soldier with a machine gun can take them out once they're low enough.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Actualy, since the presence of the ship is known, despite its AIS being turned off and it's been loitering in the area for some time, it seems an easy to identify drone platform. If it were one. Small consumer style drones can't travel that far and return, let alone hover for a while. So, any drones using the ship as a launch and land platform would be of the larger size units detectable by radar.
Even if no one thought of it at the time, one would think there are some recordings. Even if there are no recordings of radar tracks, once the drones started to be spotted in Denmark AND the Danes knew the Russian ship was sitting close by in international water, AND the drone incursions continued, one would think at least a few people would have been assigned to keep a sharp eye on radar returns around the ship.
Having identified the flight path of the drones and noticing that they come and go from the Russian war ship would seem rather obvious. If it were happening.
If there are then there has been no evidence presented. It has all the hallmarks of a modern-day UFO flap just like we saw in the eastern US in December.
And there were a lot of NATO vessels, aircraft and surveillance systems operating around Denmark from the day of the initial Copenhagen airport drone sightings on 22 September.
Article: NATO's major maritime exercise Neptune Strike has just begun with Danish participation of aircraft, frigates and helicopters.
Activities include the participation of the Danish frigate Niels Juel, Danish [F-16 and F-35A] fighter jets, surveillance aircraft and helicopters. The operations will include aircraft carrier-based air missions over Denmark
Neptune Strike 25-3 ran from 22 to 26 September 2025, with the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group operating in the North Sea off the west coast of Denmark and multinational task groups conducting joint missions in the Baltic and Mediterranean.
Article: Sailors assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 9, embarked aboard the world's largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), and Royal Danish Air Force Airmen, assigned to Operations Support Wing, Tactical Support Squadron, conduct Combat Search and Rescue training near Airbase Karup, Denmark, Sept. 23, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Second Class Tajh Payne)
Article: Seaman Kris Franklin, assigned to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), stands watch as the ship transits the Danish Straits, Sept. 26, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Cesar Licona)
MonkeeSage
Senior Member.
Agree. The fact that actual Russian drones have been detected in several EU countries (Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Estonia), and more recently shot down over Poland, suggests to me if actual Russian drones were flying in Danish airspace there would be reported detections from radar and cUAS systems and not just visual identifications.
It should be pointed out that there are no small drones with that kind of range and loiter time. If you want a drone that can go 50 nautical miles and then loiter you need something bigger than a commercial delivery quadcopter, and the bigger your drone is, the louder it is and the bigger radar cross-section it will have. And to be silent, not show up on radar and evade pursuing aircraft you'd need some additional stealth construction.
And if the Russians had big stealth drones with that kind of range that they haven't deployed in Ukraine I don't know that they'd risk their time, resources and stealth technology carrying them on an already-sanctioned crude oil tanker, hauling them onto the deck in full view of any surveillance satellites, and then flying them across open ocean, loitering over Copenhagen and nearby airports with their navigation lights on to scare the Danes, and then retrieving them night after night. (I mean, they could be crashing their expensive stealth drones into the Sound after every shift.)
The super-stealth thing is an issue even if you're launching it fairly close to land, or from trucks; would the gains be worth exposing the technology and/or risking losing it in a crash?
Or is there some flaw in that thought process?
John J.
Senior Member.
"Danish PM calls for strong answer from EU leaders to Russia's hybrid attacks", BBC News 01 October 2025 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8jdene16roExternal Quote:
Also on the BBC, as of c. 02:15 UTC,
"Munich airport closes after drones spotted nearby",
BBC News 03 October 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpw1e7j5ew9oExternal Quote:
gargamel
Senior Member
This is, I think the very first level-headed commentary I have read in Swedish media (SVT, so state media FWIW) so far:
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/...tt-dronare-startade-fran-skuggflottans-fartyg
Professor Liwång from the national Swedish Defence University says among other things that it is unlikely for any drones to have been launched from ships, in particular these so called "shadow fleet" tankers as it is not in their interest to draw any attention to themselves.
But the real "clincher" is at the end:
"I am still not convinced there's even been a single drone over any airport in Denmark"
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/...tt-dronare-startade-fran-skuggflottans-fartyg
Professor Liwång from the national Swedish Defence University says among other things that it is unlikely for any drones to have been launched from ships, in particular these so called "shadow fleet" tankers as it is not in their interest to draw any attention to themselves.
But the real "clincher" is at the end:
"I am still not convinced there's even been a single drone over any airport in Denmark"
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Matt33
Senior Member
Drone sighting over Munich airport.
In my opinion another example of circulating drone hysteria.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/muenchen-flughafen-drohnen-100.html
In my opinion another example of circulating drone hysteria.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
I'm not sure what to make of this. He's clearly taking the piss, whatever else he's doing:
Source: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1973857402022949006#m
Source: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1973857402022949006#m
jarlrmai
Senior Member.
Taking advantage of the situation, stirring the pot etc.
Mendel
Senior Member.
We've seen this before with Nordstream.
• X happens.
• People blame Russia.
• However, X has no benefit for Russia; one could argue it's detrimental.
• "Hybrid Warfare."
Like "it's aliens" in ufology, "hybrid warfare" is used to buzz away any contradictions that would reveal that the claim doesn't make sense and has no evidence to support it.
I got some photos from the airport today, it still looks like the second video was taken from one of the three small windows. And not from the new building.
I shot them in 50mp, I removed the exif btw.
https://www.jottacloud.com/s/136b5841ea1867746b0a3cf8e11be73382d
I shot them in 50mp, I removed the exif btw.
https://www.jottacloud.com/s/136b5841ea1867746b0a3cf8e11be73382d
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