Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a well-timed ploy to ramp up defense spending? Germany's evidence-free claim that a drone found lying between Ukrainian cargo planes on the canopy of Leipzig/Halle airport is part of a pattern.
Last year's late-autumn drone sighting hysteria that swept across Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, was used by the bloc to amplify and entrench an anti-Russia stance that has seen it throw hundreds of billions it cannot afford into weapons and a war its chosen side cannot win.
Tens of millions of Euro has since been spent on the back of a 'scare' that has been shown to have been irrational, exuberant and driven by vested interests.
The most bizarre national security scare in recent European history began at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport on September 2 last year. According to Denmark’s Frihedsbrevet news site, an airport employee told her supervisors that she saw two drones approach the area “stealthily,” adding that “they are big. They are not toys.”
The airport was temporarily shut down, and within hours, reports of a similar drone incursion came in from Oslo, Norway.
“I can only say that this is in my eyes a serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the time. “I cannot in any way deny that it is Russia.” Her Norwegian counterpart, Gahr Store, came to a similar conclusion. “Russia has violated Norwegian airspace on three occasions this spring and summer,” he claimed. “We cannot determine whether this was done intentionally or due to navigation errors. Regardless of the cause, this is not acceptable.”
“It is clear we are witnessing a pattern of persistent contestation at our borders,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “Our critical infrastructure is at risk. And Europe will respond to this threat with strength and determination.”
Open-source investigators insisted that the sightings were a hoax from the outset. Sleuths on the Metabunk forums concluded that the ‘drone’ seen at Kastrup Airport in the above footage was actually a small single-engine plane. FlightRadar24 data showed one such plane – a Socata TB-20 Trinidad – passing over the airport’s main runway twice at the time of the sighting.
Where were drones spotted?
Nevertheless, panic spread across northern Europe as drones were supposedly spotted at the following airports, military bases, and infrastructure sites in the following days and weeks:
- September 23: Aalborg Airport, Denmark
- September 24: Aalborg Airport, Billund Airport, Sonderborg, Esbjerg and Skrydstrup airports, Denmark
- September 25: Billund Airport, Denmark; Thyssenkrupp factory, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany; University Medical Center, Kiel, Germany; Bundeswehr base, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
September 26: Karup Air Base, Skrydstrup Air Base, Jutland Dragoon Regiment base, Denmark
- September 27: Orland Main Air Station, Norway
- September 28: Bronnoysund Airport, Norway; Borris Camp, Denmark
- October 2: Munich Airport, Germany; Elsenborn-Butgenbach Air Base, Belgium
- October 3: Munich Airport, Germany
- October 31: Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, Germany
- November 2: Bremen Airport, Germany; Kleine Brogel Air Base, Belgium
- November 6: Gothenburg Airport, Sweden; Brussels Airport, Antwerp Port, Belgium
- November 9: Liege Airport, Doel Nuclear Power Plant, Belgium
- November 22: Volkel Air Base, Netherlands
- December 1: In the Irish Sea off Dublin, during Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s arrival by plane
Police across northern Europe received thousands of additional drone reports from civilians. In Denmark alone, nearly 6,000 reports of suspected drones were filed.
Did the drones even exist?
Not only is there no proof that Russia was connected with these sightings, there is no evidence that any drones were present at all. No wreckage has been recovered, no perpetrators have been identified, and no footage of the drones exists, except for the video from Copenhagen that apparently shows a light aircraft.
Despite being certain that Denmark was under “hybrid attack,” Mette Frederiksen acknowledged in late September that there could be an “alternate explanation” for the sightings. Six months later, six government sources told Denmark’s TV2 that they don’t “have any technical evidence to support that Denmark was subjected to a hybrid attack with drones.” Frihedsbrevet’s sources came to a similar conclusion, with the airport employee who reported the initial sighting admitting that she could have been mistaken.
Airport management still insist that drones were present in the area on September 22, but police have not acknowledged any drones, only “reports” of drones.
Danish troops reportedly opened fire on a drone over Borris Camp on September 28. According to an investigation by TV2, the only aircraft operating in the area at the time was a turboprop passenger plane. The Danish military, if TV2’s reporting is correct, nearly shot down a civilian aircraft over a false alarm.
After interviewing witnesses and reviewing surveillance footage, Norwegian police closed their investigation on November 6, stating that they were “unable to confirm or deny whether drones were actually observed on the night of September 23.”
German police have not been able to confirm any drone activity; Dutch officials have identified no threat, with internal documents stating that there was “no indication of sabotage or attacks on vital objects.” Dutch and Belgian authorities have found no credible basis for panic, with Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken issuing a half-apology last month for attempting to pass off a video of a police helicopter as evidence of nefarious aerial activity.
Did they just lie?
Out of every country involved, Denmark’s leaders were most insistent that Russia was behind the spate of sightings. Frederiksen, Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, and Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard all described the incidents as “attacks,” despite nothing being attacked and no attackers being present.
“I consider it a new reality that Denmark and Europe are under more violent and frequent hybrid attacks,” Frederiksen said in a televised address on September 25. “And even though the authorities cannot conclude who is behind the hybrid attacks…there is primarily one country that poses a threat to Europe's security – and that is Russia.”
The flood of tips and reports from the public can be written off either as mass hysteria, or – more charitably – as a natural reaction from Europeans primed by their politicians and media to believe that Russia is planning an all-out war on the continent. As for why Frederiksen would stoke this fear, however, some clues can be found in her actions.
At the time, Denmark was just over a year into an historic rearmament program. After a €5.4 billion military budget hike in 2024, Frederiksen announced last February that defense spending would be increased from 2.4% to 3% of GDP by 2030 (since increased to 3.5%). By late 2025, Denmark had purchased hundreds of armored combat vehicles, signed contracts for new air defense systems, increased annual conscription numbers, and, for the first time in its history, introduced compulsory military service for women.
Denmark, she said last February, needs to undergo a “massive rearmament,” because “We don’t know what [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is planning, but we know that he and Russia are in the process of rearming.”
Frederiksen referenced this rearmament again in her September address, declaring that “the events of recent days only emphasize how important it is.”
Denmark held the EU’s rotating presidency at the time, and Frederiksen added that the alleged drone threat would be made front and center when EU leaders met in Copenhagen the following week, and that she would push for “the establishment of an actual drone wall.”
The EU’s drone wall
Frederiksen kept her word. Published on October 16, the European Commission’s ‘Defense Readiness Roadmap’ stated that a ‘European Drone Defense Initiative’ – the so-called “drone wall” comprising sensors and interceptors – would be operational along the bloc’s eastern borders with Russia and Belarus by 2027.
Drones continued to dominate the agenda at a European Council summit in Brussels in December. “The European Council strongly condemns all recent hybrid attacks against the European Union and its Member States,” read a statement released after the meeting. “In the light of Russia’s and Belarus’ intensified hybrid campaign, it calls for accelerated efforts to strengthen resilience, protect critical infrastructure, and…decisively ramp up Europe’s defense readiness by 2030.”
None of this is to suggest that Denmark orchestrated the drone panic to justify its remilitarization, or to sell the EU’s “drone wall.” Both initiatives were already underway at the time. Instead, it illustrates how Danish and EU officials saw an opportunity not to let a crisis go to waste, and kept the drone threat alive even as their own police forces, to put it mildly, struggled to substantiate it.
Belgium's very own drone crisis
Frederiksen wasn’t the only national leader who saw an opportunity amid the panic. Remember Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken? After police hotlines were flooded with more than 550 reports of drones between September and December, Francken bypassed the standard bidding process to authorize the purchase of €50 million worth of drone detection and jamming systems.
An investigation by Belgium’s VRT broadcaster has since found that none of the reports of drones were credible, and Francken has been hammered by the opposition for sharing an image of a ‘drone’ over Brussels Airport that turned out to be a police helicopter. VRT found that the defense ministry ignored warnings from Belgium’s Inspectorate of Finance and purchased detection antennas at an inflated price, and Francken is now the subject of an inquiry by the Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office.
The debacle is reminiscent of the Agusta-Dassault affair. During the 1980s, defense contractors Agusta and Dassault paid the equivalent of €4 million in bribes to secure no-bid contracts for AW109 transport helicopters and electronic warfare equipment. Once exposed, the scandal led to the criminal conviction of Belgian Defense Minister Guy Coeme and Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary General Willy Claes.
So did Russian drones spook the EU?
Nearly eight months after the first ‘drones’ were spotted over Copenhagen, the crisis is still being milked across Europe. In early May, long after the threat had been debunked in Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands, the Dutch defense ministry announced that it would acquire approximately 900 “electro-optical aiming devices” for use against UAVs, “without prior announcement due to the urgency of a crisis situation.”
Questioned by the Belgian parliament in April, Francken insisted that there is “no other plausible explanation” for the reports other than Russian drones, and that the only way to prove or disprove this is to invest in drone defense technology. “As long as you don’t have the means to detect and neutralize drones, it stands to reason that you cannot immediately produce physical evidence,” he told lawmakers.
The Dutch and Belgians aren’t letting a lack of evidence stop them from pursuing the defense deals that they wanted from this crisis, and the EU is unlikely to step in and pump the brakes.
The EU's censorious and paranoid media industry is the perfect environment for fake news to fester, as long as it suits the bloc. Remember, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's claims of “GPS jamming” hitting her plane on a trip to Bulgaria last September, and how, despite it being roundly debunked within days, it has been allowed to fester to serve her political agenda.
Anti-Russian hysteria is the animating political force in the EU, and the bloc’s leaders clearly aren’t going to let police and media investigations, or common sense, put a stop to the show.