On the night of twenty-two September final yr, the sky above Copenhagen Airport immediately grew to become the centre of a nationwide safety scare. The backstory of how the incident took place has been delivered to mild by Andreas Munk of Danish investigative outlet Frihedsbrevet.
The primary particular person to sound the alarm was an airport worker who would later change into the case’s star witness. Recognizing two unusual objects hovering and darting throughout the night sky, she didn’t hesitate: “There are two drones. They’re massive. It’s not toys,” she reported up the chain. Inside minutes, Danish airspace was closed to every part besides emergency landings.
What she noticed that evening, she later described in vivid element. One object was a big, sq. form, roughly 1.5 by 1.5 metres, that reminded her of a robotic lawnmower with rounded corners and a propeller at every nook. The second was smaller, white, spherical, and sooner. Each had vivid white lights. But the witness was remarkably candid about her personal inexperience: she had by no means seen an actual drone in particular person in her whole life, solely on tv, in movies, or within the information. “I’ve not seen any drones bodily… however I clarify from what I really feel, after which it was a drone,” she informed investigators. To her, the gradual hover that might immediately speed up, the propellers, and the lights all added up.
Police, nonetheless, reached a really completely different conclusion. After interviewing her 4 instances and having specialists analyse the telephone video filmed by her colleague, they had been clear: there have been no drones. The big transferring mild captured on the grainy footage was a faculty coaching airplane from Roskilde that had been cleared to fly within the space. The small, fast-moving “zigzagging” object was merely lens flare, a standard reflection contained in the digital camera lens attributable to vivid exterior lights. When the witness watched the identical video once more alongside journalists from Frihedsbrevet, she herself admitted that, sure, it may simply be mistaken for a small plane. Police delivered the identical message to a number of of her colleagues: what that they had seen had been digital camera artefacts, extraordinary plane… or, in a single later case, a police helicopter.
That final element reveals a traditional false-confirmation loop. As soon as the preliminary drone report went out, authorities scrambled a helicopter from the police tactical unit to hunt for the suspected intruders. A colleague who noticed the helicopter later that night naturally assumed it was yet one more drone, solely to be informed by police that he had truly seen their very own response plane. The very act of sending up a helicopter in pursuit of reported drones created a brand new “sighting” that appeared to verify the unique alarm.
Danish public broadcaster DR this week aired a documentary titled “Droner over Danmark” that additional underlined issues concerning the authorities’ dealing with of the occasions, together with stories (as first reported by sUAS Information) of the Danish navy doubtless mistaking a Norwegian passenger airliner for a drone and firing upon it over Billund.
You’ll be able to watch the documentary right here: https://www.dr.dk/drtv/program/droner-over-danmark_596478
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