In the past few days there has been a crisis in Denmark, as multiple airports have shut down over drones flying over restricted airspace. Politicians are making big statements, police are flying around trying to shoot them down and everyone is trying to figure out where the drones are coming from and what they want.

My opinion of this case is that there are probably no drones whatsoever. I think this is yet another case of drone-related hysteria, similar to ones we have seen in New Jersey and the UK. I think that once this is over there will be zero actual drones identified, zero drones shot down and no arrests made, aside from a couple of tourists flying hobby drones.

So why do I think that the Danish police are wrong here?

The first clue is the type of drones being described. The reports from the police do not describe the small, stealthy drones you would expect from a spying/recon operation. Instead, they describe large, car-sized drones with big flashing lights on them. There is no record of the Russians (or anyone else) using large, car-sized drones with big flashing lights as spy drones because, frankly, they are not idiots. A drone that large and that visible would be easily tracked and followed by any remotely competent opponent. Spy drones are usually designed to be as hard to spot as possible.

The second clue is that despite these drones being so large and so visible, nobody has been able to track any of them. These massive drones are apparently ghosts. This should definitely be considered strange, since the European police frequently track down and arrest the pilots of tiny quadcopters. They are completely capable of tracking small flying vehicles. But in this case they can't track down any of these drones, despite them being massive.

The third clue is the complete lack of photographic and video evidence. So far, the only video evidence of these drones has been videos of blurry blobs being filmed at night. These blurry blobs flash green and red, which matches the legally required navigation lights for aircraft operating in commercial airspace. Generally, if you see these lights, it should give you a hint that you are looking at a civilian vehicle, not a military drone. The fact that all videos are too blurry to identify is also a hint. If every video is blury, then every video that wasn't blurry probably showed something mundane, so it wasn't posted.

Of course, this does not prove that the drone sightings are fake. We do, however have several recent events where large, car-sized drones were reported. And in every similar case, it turned out to be nothing.

New Jersey, 2024

The most obvious example we can point to is New Jersey. In the winter of last year, there was a massive drone panic in New Jersey, with people all over the state reporting large drones being sighted. Airports were shut down, politicians made speeches about potential nation-state attacks and police reported that they were tracking drones all over the place. And in this case, every report of large drones, both from the public and from officials, was wrong.

This video from Mick West goes over the videos from that scare, and shows that in every case where location data was posted, they could match the drone sighting to a plane, helicopter or star. The FBI eventually released a statement where they said they had no evidence of any activity and that most of the sightings appeared to be misidentifications. An important point is that many of the misidentified drones came from local authorities. Local police are not immune to making mistakes, and they are often wrong about cases like this.

Colorado, 2019

Local authorities in Colorado report large swarms of drones flying over the state. They announce sightings of swarms of drones flying in formation, run by a sophisticated actor. 70 agencies get called in to investigate, including the FAA. They ultimately find nothing, and the FAA later concludes that the sightings were most likely misidentified planes, stars, and planets.

Langley, 2023

Langley Air Force base was shut down after drone reports. After the details were released to the public, it was revealed that the shutdown was based on eyewitness estimates of this:

https://preview.redd.it/wy746qk1u9rf1.png?width=634&format=png&auto=webp&s=6065975eeac8a1bbcfe13b487bedd55227f68847

According to them, they decided that it was not a plane because the eyewitnesses didn't think the movements were very plane-like. Despite it looking exactly like a plane.

So why does this keep happening?

The truth is that most people are really bad at identifying lights in the sky. Most cities have a bunch of lights flying over them at any given time. Whenever these drone sightings get reported, people (both civilians and local authorities) start looking up at the sky and misidentifying the lights they see as drones. That's why a bunch of airports started shutting down after the first report. This panic spreads quickly, and officials would rather be on the safe side when they get reports from their employees of strange lights in the sky. This then gets seen as confirmation that the scare is real, and it keeps spreading like dominos.

A Timeline

Here's my best estimate of what actually happened. This is just my guess, and I may be wrong, but this is what I believe matches the evidence we have so far.

1. 10 minutes before the airport shutdown, a small plane operated by Copenhagen Airtaxi AS flew over the Kastrup airport on an approved training flight. This plane was filmed by people on the airport, and reported as a drone. The company confirmed that some of the videos that have been posted match their plane.
2. Based on these reports, Kastrup shuts down operation and calls in the authorities to investigate.
3. 20 minutes after the shutdown, a police helicopter flies over the airport to investigate. This helicopter is filmed by passengers and reported as a drone.
4. After the police find nothing, the airport reopens.
5. Gardemoen airport in Oslo shuts down after employees hear about the Denmark case and start misidentifying lights in the sky as drones. Oslo police later admit that they're not sure there were any drones at all.
6. Other airports across Denmark start shutting down for the same reason. Each shutdown is seen as confirmation that all the other shutdowns were valid.
7. Police start flying over airports and looking for these drones. Their helicopters are reported as drones again.
8. Government ministers start talking about Russian spy drones and promising to shoot them out of the sky.

Ultimately, I think this will end just like the New Jersey situation ended. Drones will continue being reported for a week or two, the police will find nothing, and everyone will be very embarrassed. Of course, maybe this time there really were Russian drones. But I doubt it, personally.