Denmark’s armed forces have admitted mistakes in their original report on suspected drones of unknown origin that flew over the country in the autumn of 2025. In a revised account published on Thursday, the military accepted that soldiers may have fired into the air as a civilian aircraft passed overhead, rather than at a drone.
The sightings came in the run-up to an EU summit in Copenhagen at the start of October 2025. Drones were reported above both civilian and military air bases, which led to tighter security, temporary airport closures and a ban on private drone flights. Among the sites affected was Skrydstrup air base, where Ukrainian pilots train on F-16 fighter jets.
The official version of events was met with some scepticism. In June this year the government and the military confirmed that drones had flown over Denmark, although their origin was still unknown, and the military published a report on how it had handled the incidents. Its detailed description of one episode was then called into question when media reported witness accounts that contradicted it, and Defence Minister Jeppe Bruus asked for a review.
The revised report on the Skrydstrup incident concedes that the military’s earlier account might have been wrong. It says soldiers may have shot into the air while a civilian plane flew past, an explanation that some aviation and drone experts had already suggested. The armed forces still maintain, however, that the soldiers fired at what they believed to be a drone, an assessment they base partly on the object’s flight pattern.
In its statement, the military said the unit deployed at Borris had been carrying out a sensitive guard duty to protect Ukrainian trainees at the camp, and that it observed drones over Borris on 24, 25 and 28 September 2025. Since the incidents, Denmark has been working to strengthen its capacity to detect and counter drones.
