Denmark shuts multiple airports, more unidentified drones spotted | Hacker News Reader

Denmark shuts multiple airports, more unidentified drones spotted

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39 pointshallh46 comments

I wouldn't rule out a mass panic-type event. A similar event which closed London's Gatwick airport (one of Europe's busiest) garnered no evidence and no serious lines of enquiry.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-...

See also the recent closure of Heathrow Terminal 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5ypl5grg24t

These drones have lights on at night. That doesn't sound too much like Russians to me. But maybe that's just what the Russians want me to think...

At least one of the videos published recently was likely of a school plane from Copenhagen Airtaxi, according to a Norwegian drone trade magazine: https://www.dronemag.no/dansk-droneobservasjon-kan-ha-vaert-...

Don't get me wrong - at Gatwick there were many reports of people seeing drones with lights. The only problem is they weren't - they were seeing something else and reporting as seeing drones because they must have seen a drone - what else could it be?

If the intent is to harass - lights on is the way to go, to make their presence very clearly known.

But, as I said, it looks like the early (earliest?) observations were actually of a school plane. Probably some concerned citizen filmed it, and the authorities didn't immediately realize what it was since figuring out the exact place of a light in the sky in a cell phone video isn't that easy.

Could it still be the Russians? Yes, I guess. But if the first observation turns out to have NOT been the Russians, to me that's a bit like how the first crop circles turned out to be a confirmed prank - yeah, technically later ones could still be aliens but given how it started doesn't that seem implausible?

Not to make a comparison otherwise, of course believing in nefarious Russians is a lot more reasonable than believing in mischievous aliens. But I'm trying to make an argument about a causal explanations and a kind of data-generating process, ... not doing too great a job at it I guess.

4 smaller airports in DK had visits during this night as well.

Also lights on. Still thinking coincidence?

Mass-hysteria isn't just coincidence, it feeds off itself.

The 4 other airports were all in DK, where it's top of the news and where everyone is talking about it. Not in other countries.

I think mass hysteria is too perjorative. We have a lot of suspicious data points, but then a new data point turns up (early lights were a false alert) which suggests that the data generating process may be pretty biased.

Definitively not coincidence, but there are a lot of things that could cause a pattern of reported air lights - such as a warning to be on high alert looking for them, the autumnal equinox (nights are getting much darker very quickly in Denmark right now), etc.

If I was 14, a rascal up to no good, had a drone and lived close to an airport I know what I'd be doing for the lulz.

You would hopefully also know that this has serious consequences. Burning your home might be cheaper.

What kinds of consequences? Grounding? Have my drone taken away?

> Burning your home might be cheaper.

Makes no sense. Kids get off easy. And can be less concerned with consequences.

Beyond the fine, the airlines will try to get their losses in millions back from someone. If it turns out to have been a private person, there will be lawsuits. In general parents are liable for their children. When a child is old enough to fly a drone on its own, I think it will also be of partial-legal age. Acceptance of manslaughter and threat to national security is not taken lightly.

Denmark doesn't work that way.

In which point is it different?

Yup and impossible to verify, you can wake up and claim drones were sighted and that’s that.

There's footage of this incident, footage of monday's Copenhagen incident, and there were arrests in Oslo on monday for another incident over Oslo.

The arrest in Oslo were a married couple from Signapore in their 60s. The man was fined and 8000 NOK for admitting to flying the drone and might get deported. They were flying in central Oslo, and it seems unrelated to the drones in Denmark.

There were also unconfirmed sightings of drones around the airport in Oslo. The director of police states that "It is still unclear what was observed. There are conflicting interpretations of the observations that were made".

Thank you for the additional context. Based on this, I agree that Oslo might not actually be related.

Where

In Oslo a 50 year old mand was arrested and his drone confiscated.

Link:

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/seneste/drone-ved-oslo-lufthavn

BREAKING now is additional drones over 4 other smaller Danish airports: Aalborg, Esbjerg og Sønderborg samt Flyvestation Skrydstrup.

Link:

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/droner-set-over-koebenhavn...

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/overblik-droner-over-flere...

(In Danish - Google Translate is your friend)

I was replying to claims of footage

It is IMO only a matter of time before there is a significant deadly aviation incident involving a drone. The aviation industry is not built around the idea of anybody having this sort of ability.

Denmark is talking about blocking the Baltic to commercial ship traffic that does not have Western insurance. (Read: Russian ghost fleet.) The Law of the Sea permits this when there is a clear environmental threat. (Oil spillages etc.)

In parallel, some (Russian-controlled?) ships have been refusing Danish pilots for navigating the straits.

So... maybe Vlad is playing Goodfellas. Like many other dirtbags.

Drones spotted at 4 additional smaller airports in Denmark during the night.

Still with lights on however.

Link to Danish story:

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/overblik-droner-over-flere...

People are the new oil, and its technological process dictates that there are valves to control its flows dynamically.

Airport group are suffering a huge financial loss just with these tiny remotecontrolaircrafts. The government should restrict any commoners to own any of these 'military-grade' aircraft.

I believe this will call for much stricter drone laws, possibly having tracking and stronger license requirements.

Officials have made announcements that tie the alleged drone sightings to “capable” (e.g., foreign state) actors. How would stricter laws address that?

It’s also already illegal to fly drones above airports.

So are these Russian drones? Or perhaps protests against their pushing of Chat Control?

Could also be USA preparing for invasion of Greenland. You never known with terrorist nations...

So far, the police have only confirmed that they are non-commercial drones. The Ministry of Defence is hosting a press conference about it shortly.

Summit in Shanghai there Xi gave ok to probe and harass NATO, immediately 20 intelligence drones 100+ miles deep into Poland, 3 fighter jets 10 minutes into Estonia airspace. (Those actions already triggered kneejerk in NATO to give first priority to beefing up NATO countries' air defenses instead of supplying air-defense systems to Ukraine).

Add to that cyberattack on the airports 3 days ago and now massive drones in European airports (when Russia has been for several months having its own airports periodically shut down by Ukranian drones and thus clearly understood such an action and how it can be used in a hybrid war and also how it can hint at capability to perform a "Pautina"(SpiderWeb) style operation against Europe) - what are the chances for the drones to not be Russian. And not forgetting cyberattack on the airports 3 days ago.

> "Summit in Shanghai there Xi gave ok to probe and harass NATO"

Please could you provide a pointer, as I have never heard such a thing.

There is no pointer. It is an opinion consensus held widely in some narrow analytical circles. In the open China clearly stated that it will not let Russia lose. China uses Russia as a ram and the war to keep NATO, and specifically US, busy in Europe.

Sounds like bs

While the motive is speculation - each event the poster pointed out happened. These are not normal events.

Yet doesn't contradict public action and fits the state doctrines.

Nailed it

Turkey taught Putin what should happen to his military airplanes that violate their airspace. Putin got the message very quickly.

Europe should do the same instead of pretending Putin will understand any weaker response.

TL;DR: shoot them down on sight.

I'm kind of lost in my understanding when it comes to Europe. To me it is very illustrative how the Wirecard guy (son of a KGB agent and is currently residing in Russia) while having access to key intelligence information of Germany - by virtue of for example informants and other intelligence services payments going through Wirecard - at the same time was openly having "safaris" with the Wagner group in Syria.

I like how people always forget to mention that the reason as to why the plane getting shot down never resulted in an "escalation" is that Putin immediately bombed Turkish troops and killed like 30 people, at which point they both basically agreed to sweep it under the rug.

A few additional points of context to consider:

- The "Turkey taught Putin" narrative is kind of BS. The leader of Turkey imprisoned the pilot who shot down the Russian jet, essentially saying he acted on his own. Afterwards, Turkey bought Russian military equipment. This reaction is the opposite of sovereignty.

- Speculation: Russia is looking to provoke Europe into responding. The thinking is to get Europe to focus on their own air defense, over assisting Ukraine. This is why the general, and correct, response in Europe is to keep calm and keep sending air defense equipment to Ukraine instead of freaking out. There of course are some lines where it is not possible to shrug it off, like recently in Poland, where the situation was so unsafe that we had to react with weapons. The most important element of Europe's security is that the Ukraine war does not end in a victory for Russia.

Edit: Formatting

> The leader of Turkey imprisoned the pilot who shot down the Russian jet

The pilots were arrested almost a year later, a few days after a coup attempt they were allegedly involved in.

Before that they were treated like heroes in Turkey.

> Speculation ...

That would be nice for Europe, but Putin openly stated that the goal is not to conquer whole Ukraine alone, but to restore the borders of the USSR in all its glory.

Why are TL;DR's always at the end of a piece?

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