A nine-month investigation in Denmark has failed to prove that reported flying objects were actually drones
Danish police say they have found no evidence that flying objects which shut down Copenhagen Airport last year were drones, concluding a nine-month investigation into an incident initially treated as an alleged Russian attack.
Danish airports repeatedly suspended flights in September 2025 after reports of suspected drones near the airfields. Copenhagen Airport was forced to halt operations for several hours after objects were reported flying near the runway, disrupting commercial air traffic and triggering a major police investigation.
At the time, Danish authorities claimed Russia may have been behind the incidents, despite presenting no evidence. In May, Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin said Copenhagen had failed to produce any proof that drones had entered Danish airspace during the alleged incursions.
Police said on Thursday they could neither prove nor disprove that drones had been operating in the vicinity of Copenhagen Airport. “We cannot demonstrate that there was drone activity in and around the airport,” Chief Police Soren Thomassen told reporters. No suspects were identified and the investigation has been closed, he said.
According to Thomassen, there was unexplained activity in the airspace that evening, but none of the evidence gathered over nine months conclusively showed the objects were drones.
Police said they had reviewed witness statements, photographs, videos, CCTV footage, radar data, and extensive records of air and maritime traffic. Despite the exhaustive inquiry, investigators were unable to establish what the objects were.
One radar detected an object traveling at around 100 kph over the Oresund Strait. However, Dutch manufacturer Robin Radar later told investigators that the bird radar installed at Copenhagen Airport was not designed to detect drones.
Danish officials claimed the alleged drone flights were carried out by a “skilled operator.” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen later escalated the rhetoric, calling the incident a “hybrid attack on critical Danish infrastructure.”
The case had begun to unravel long before Thursday’s announcement. Within hours of the airport shutdown, open-source investigators concluded that a widely circulated video appeared to show a training aircraft rather than a drone, according to Dronewatch portal. An internal memo later reportedly revealed that air traffic controllers had not observed any drones during the incident, while police acknowledged in March that the credibility of a key witness had come under scrutiny.
Earlier this week, investigators also said the first completed police probes into other alleged drone sightings reported across Denmark in the autumn of 2025 had likewise found no evidence of hostile or unauthorized drone activity.
