Denmark Launches Sea Drones to Enhance Maritime Surveillance
Two sea drones were launched from a port south of Copenhagen on Monday (June 16) in a trial by Denmark's defence ministry as part of efforts to boost its maritime surveillance capabilities.
The two Voyager-class USVs, which are owned and operated by U.S.-based company Saildrone, were towed out from the port of Koge, south of the Danish capital.
"The security situation dictates that we have to improve the combat ability of Danish defence and this includes also our navy," said Lieutenant General Kim Jesper Jorgensen, National Armaments Director at the Danish Ministry of Defence's Acquisition and Logistics Organisation.
The two USVs launched will run their trial in the Baltic Sea for three months. Another two Voyagers launched earlier in June from Koge will also take part in the trial.
Defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen said in April that Denmark will spend about 4 billion crowns ($614 million) on building and procuring 26 navy vessels for patrolling, oil spill response and surveillance of undersea cables.
Countries bordering the Baltic Sea are on high alert after a number of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Russia has denied it was behind the outages.
(Reuters)