Denmark plans a $400 million purchase of long-range drones to upgrade its reconnaissance capabilities.
THE WATCH STAFF
Denmark has announced an ambitious new drone acquisition program to upgrade its Arctic defense. The $400 million purchase of long-range drones will help meet NATO obligations and show strength in an increasingly strategic region.
“We need to use more muscle in the region,” said Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said in January 2024.
The allocation, part of a longer-term military upgrade hammered out in a 2022 parliamentary agreement, also calls for an advanced air warning radar on the Faroe Islands, an autonomous Danish territory. The drones, which take off and land vertically, making them usable on ships and in treacherous terrain in Artic territories and patrol zones. The radar will let Denmark more effectively surveil the GIUK gap, a strategic stretch of seas between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, according to the High North News, a Norwegian newspaper. The Faroe Islands government has agreed to allow a new radar installation on Sornfelli Mountain, the location of a previous NATO radar installation operated by Denmark that was shuttered in 2007.
Denmark’s foreign policy calls for the Arctic to remain a low-tension, rules-based region, and the drones will help that mission. The drones should also prove useful in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in the remote, icy regions and aid commercial shipping and other activity.
“We have a special obligation to our immediate area, and the Kingdom of Denmark will in the future take greater responsibility for security in the entire region. This entails that we need to use more muscle in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. Therefore, I am very satisfied that we have agreed to secure funding for procuring long-range drones in the first partial agreement. This is a delivery on one of the central decisions from the Arctic capacity package,” Troels Lund Poulsen said.
The governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands were included in the $21 billion defense agreement, which aims for Denmark to spend the NATO target of 2% of its GDP on defense by 2030. Danish officials have said they would like to meet the 2% target even sooner.
Denmark’s drones will be able to operate in subzero temperatures, according to the military bid published in 2023, Defense News reported.