On 22 September 2025, unidentified drones entered the controlled airspace of Copenhagen airport. Flights were halted and more than 20,000 passengers were affected. Later, other Danish civilian and military airports reported similar drone incursions, causing them to shut down temporarily.
To this day, not much is known about where exactly the drones came from. It might have been possible to track the drones via satellites, but the Danish Armed Forces has no real space capabilities.
That is, however, about to change. In April, the Danish Armed Forces decided to establish a Space Operations Center, which, in the future, could possibly track large hostile drones entering Danish airspace. That is at least one of the capabilities that Major Nils Mahon, leader of the forthcoming Space Operations Center, foresees.
“At the moment, we are mostly just reactive to these incidents, since we don’t have a space operations center that observes this. And then you could just imagine what else we could be subjected to on land, sea or in the air,” Mahon says. He adds:
“Currently, we are among the countries who are furthest behind, when it comes to taking on space as a militarized domain.”
The Space Operations Center is scheduled to begin operations by the end of this year, and Mahon is already in the process of hiring civilian and military staff. This includes civilians with backgrounds in engineering and astrophysics and service members from across all services.Â
“We need to look at Space Situational Awareness (SSA) – where are we, where are they, who threaten us, what is it and can we do something about it? We need to look into PNT, Position Navigation and Timing. We will look at space weather, early warning and of course; who can surveil us and when and with which type of sensors, and when can we surveil the things we want to monitor and have a suite of sensors to choose from. And then there is the largest segment of them all, militarily and civilian, and that is satellite communications,” Mahon explains.
He adds that the center will help the Danish Armed Forces with integrating data, products and services from space into planning and operations. For instance, being able to provide guidance on how to handle hostile interference with navigation signals or being able to deliver imagery of dark ships – ships that have turned off their AIS transponder signal.
These capabilities will, however, be added gradually. The Space Operations Center will only have a staff of about 10 people to begin with this year, so the first order of business will be to handle Space Situational Awareness, according to Mahon. Next will come PNT and Satcom. By the end of 2028 or the beginning of 2029, Mahon expects the center will consist of 25 people.
To begin with, the Space Operations Center will also have to rely on the space assets of allied countries as well as commercial providers. Currently, Denmark has only one engagement in space; the satellite BIFROST, which is a cooperation between The Danish and Swedish Ministries of defence and industry from both countries. The BIFROST mission is mostly experimental. The Danish government currently has no immediate plans to acquire sovereign satellite constellations for the military. But Mahon assumes this will change.
“I predict that there will be a need for us to also operate in a classified, national context. The Danish Armed Forces are in the process of acquiring long-range missiles and the entire targeting perspective ought to be conducted in a national and secure framework. If we were to procure commercial sensors that would tell the world, what we are looking at,” Mahon says.
“I can’t envision handling space as a militarized domain without eventually having sovereign units,” he adds.
