Another rash of drone sightings during the weekend is being branded as “some sort of campaign against Norway,” especially after police and defense officials confirmed the drone activity on Monday. Norway’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, has confirmed that Russian aircraft violated Norwegian airspace three times last spring and summer, but Norwegian officials opted against asking NATO for Article 4 consultations.
Drone sightings last week prompted the closure of Norway’s gateway airport in Oslo for several hours, forcing several incoming flights to be redirected to other airports including Bergen’s. On Sunday night, more observations of illegal drones over Troms and Finnmark in Northern Norway forced a Norwegian Air flight from Oslo to Bardufoss to turn around and return to Oslo.
Drones were also observed on Sunday farther south, over Brønnøysund in Nordland County. More illegal drones were observed the day before even farther south, over Ørland in Trøndelag on Saturday. Ørland is the home base for most of Norway’s F35 fighter jets, prompting both police, the defense department and the police intelligence agency PST to get involved. Ørland has also recently been the site of some major NATO exercises.
“There’s reason to believe that there has been drone activity,” said Lt Col Vegard Finbard of the defense department’s operative headquarters in Bodø. Nordland’s lead prosecutor Torbjørn Sandbu wrote that the observation of the drones took place within “no fly” zones and are thus illegal and punishable under law. “Police were in place and observed several drones but then lost sight of them,” Sandbu wrote in a press statement. “We are investigating this further.”
Newspaper Aftenposten editorialized last week that Norway is unprepared for drone warfare. Drones, it wrote, “have become a weapon to spread fear in peacetime and death in war, and Norway is lagging far behind in their development.” At the same time, though, Norway and its NATO allies have been conducting major exercises in both the Arctic and the North Sea, and the US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford even made another visit to Oslo. That’s all part of a show of force aimed at sending a message to Russia, as The Barents Observer reported over the weekend (external link).
Police have no clear suspects regarding who’s behind the recent drones over Norway from north to south, but Sandbu claimed residents “can be assured that the police are taking these incidents seriously.” The sheer frequency of the drone sightings has put people on edge, and also makes experts think they’re meant to do just that. “This comes just after what’s been happening in Denmark (when drones forced closure of Copenhagen’s airport and others) and it’s very clear that someone wants to be seen,” Lars Peder Haga, an assistant professor at Norway’s air force college, told state broadcaster NRK on Monday.
Haga, who also conducts research on air force power and technology, doesn’t think it’s any surprise that “someone” wants to raise concern, adding that “it can look like some sort of campaign against Norway. It’s a type of demonstration … (and) easy to point to Russia, which has an ongoing message that we shouldn’t be involved with Ukraine.”
‘Scary times’
Martin Nymo, mayor of Målselv where the Bardufoss airport and a large military installation is located, told NRK that “it’s scary times” and that “it seems this is a coordinated action that we must take very seriously.” He noted how there’s a lot of military activity in the area and that the recent incidents “show how little it takes to disrupt aviation.”
Defense Minister Tore O Sandvik said at a security conference in Poland on Monday that the drones observed over Norway are surveillance drones. He stressed that “it’s serious” when they disrupt air traffic, but added that “we must remember that we aren’t at war. We aren’t under attack and these are surveillance drones, not Shahed drones,” which contain explosives.
Norway’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, confirmed to news bureau NTB just before the weekend that Russian military aircraft violated Norwegian airspace three times between April and mid-August: over the sea northeast of Vardø in Northern Norway, over an uninhabited area of eastern Finnmark and again northeast of Vardø. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre called the violations “unacceptable,” noting that they were the first of their kind in 10 years.
His government, though, decided not to ask for NATO’s help or invoke NATO’s Article 4, which sets off formal consultations on how to respond with other NATO allies. They most recently were invoked when Russian drones flew over or were shot down in eastern Poland.
“We have kept our allies in NATO oriented on the incidents, but haven’t asked for Article 4 consultations,” Eivind Vad Pettersson, a state secretary in the foreign ministry, told NTB. “The incidents in Norwegian air space haven’t been of the same character as those we recently have seen in Poland and Estonia.”
Pettersson said Norway hasn’t felt a need for further help to handle the “incidents.” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said Norway has instead “handled these incidents directly and clearly with Russian authorities, with the goal of reducing the risk of any misunderstandings and escalation.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
