After the incidents that forced Copenhagen and Oslo airports to close because of unidentified drones that were not shot down, Danish and Norwegian authorities can only speculate about what type of UAVs they were and who was controlling them.They are also still calculating economic losses from the four-hour closures, which left roughly 20,000 passengers waiting, cancelling plans, or diverting to other airports.
It's important to note that, despite the lack of wreckage, these were unlikely to be ordinary consumer quadcopters.Civil drones are subject to No-Fly Zones around airports and other sensitive sites (although such restrictions can sometimes be bypassed by reflashing). More likely, the objects were fixed-wing electric UAVs, not consumer models like the DJI Mavic.
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Danish police believe the drone operator(s) were sufficiently skilled to fly such systems, and they have floated an intriguing hypothesis the drones may have been launched from a ship in the Baltic Sea.
That raises the question: could russia launch something similar from a vessel, for example from one of the tankers in the shadow fleet? The simple answer is yes its entirely feasible. Pneumatic or elastic catapults have long been used to launch reconnaissance drones and decoy targets such as Gerbera-type devices from ships.
In fact, russia has already practiced ship-borne UAV launches. Back in 2020, ZALA demonstrated launches from a moving boat, and in October 2024 it resumed experiments from essentially stationary maritime platforms. Those tests included not only reconnaissance drones but also Lancet loitering munitions.
So launching UAVs from a tanker or any other civilian vessel is not particularly difficult. At the same time, russia has long developed methods to control drones over mobile networks or via mesh networks.
Using such tactics squarely within the toolkit of hybrid warfare and gradual escalation russia could attempt to provoke air-traffic chaos across European countries, inflicting significant economic damage at minimal cost to itself.
A ship-based launch also renders moot many assumptions about how far drones can reach when launched from russian or Belarusian territory; remember, the vessel can operate in international waters.
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