Denmark, rattled by mysterious drone exercise, bans civil drone flights forward of EU summit on protection and conflict in Ukraine

[ad_1] Denmark has quickly banned civil drone flights in its airspace because it prepares to host a prime European Union assembly on protection and the conflict in Ukraine, and after a surge of suspicious drone exercise at a number of airports and navy websites final week.

The ban, which runs from Monday to Friday, goals to get rid of any threat of “hostile” drones being mistaken for authorized ones or vice versa, the nation’s transport minister Thomas Danielson advised CNN.

A number of unexplained sightings of drones over civilian airports and a navy base have been reported in Denmark last week . The incidents compelled a number of airports to quickly shut and disrupted journey for tens of 1000's of individuals.

Prime European leaders will descend on Copenhagen on Wednesday for a European Council assembly to debate protection and Ukraine, adopted by a European Political Neighborhood summit within the metropolis the subsequent day.

“We're at present in a troublesome safety scenario, and we should guarantee the absolute best working situations for the armed forces and the police when they're answerable for safety throughout the EU summit,” Danish Protection Minister Troels Lund Poulsen stated in an announcement on Sunday.

Europe has been on excessive alert in current weeks because of a string of drone sightings, in addition to incursions by Russian drones into NATO airspace over Poland and Romania and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen stated that whereas authorities can not conclude who's behind the drone sightings, “we are able to at the least conclude that there's primarily one nation that poses a risk to Europe’s safety – and that's Russia.” The Kremlin has denied involvement within the drone sightings in addition to that it violated Estonian airspace.

In response to the unexplained drone flights in Denmark, NATO stated on Saturday that it's upgrading protection measures within the Baltic Sea area.

The next day, FSG Hamburg, a German air protection frigate with NATO’s “Baltic Sentry” mission, arrived in Copenhagen to assist strengthen airspace surveillance throughout the upcoming EU summit, the Danish protection ministry stated in an announcement to the Related Press.

The “Baltic Sentry” mission launched in January in response to a string of incidents that broken energy cables, telecom hyperlinks and gasoline pipelines on the Baltic Sea mattress.

It's now joined by the newly launched “Jap Sentry” mission which goals to bolster defenses on Europe’s jap flank following Russian drone incursions into Polish airspace.

Moreover, Germany introduced it is going to present “Counter-small Unmanned Plane Methods” at Denmark’s request to detect drones utilizing radar, optical and acoustic know-how, based on the Related Press.