By John Irish
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -Denmark has informed its allies that drone incursions that have briefly closed airports and affected military installations in the country are linked to another country, Latvia’s Foreign Minister Baiba Braze told Reuters on Thursday.
“The Danish government said it’s a state activity that operates it,” Braze said in an interview with Reuters.
“So we will wait for further assessments from our Danish colleagues, but it’s very clear on allies’ side, on our side, we all have to invest in counter-drone capability.”
Denmark’s foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Denmark said on Thursday that the incidents were hybrid attacks aimed at spreading fear, though authorities could not identify the perpetrators.
Latvia is active in developing counter-drone capabilities, including acoustic sensors, and has been working closely with Ukraine, which faces drone attacks from Russia almost daily.
“We have been consciously investing in counter-drone activity. But at the same time, these types of scenarios are asymmetric. It’s very difficult to predict when and where,” she said.
Braze said it was tricky to handle for countries like Latvia and Denmark given they were not at war so their airspace was not closed unlike in Ukraine.
“There’s a lot of legitimate activity that’s happening. So that has to be worked out properly,” she said.
The EU is looking at how to create a “drone wall” along the EU’s eastern border – a project infused with urgency by a Russian drone incursion into Poland.
Analysts and officials said the incursion exposed gaps in Europe’s and NATO’s ability to protect against drones, although Polish and NATO forces shot down several of them, albeit using expensive air defence systems and warplanes.
“The actual time that you have to do that is not much, and also you don’t want to use F-35 fighters,” said Braze, whose country heads up a NATO drone coalition to help move the alliance forward on the issue.
(Reporting by John Irish and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; editing by Michelle Nichols and Howard Goller)
