For weeks, a sense of unease has gripped Europe’s skies. Reports of mysterious drones flying over airports, military bases, and sensitive infrastructure have triggered airport shutdowns, NATO deployments, and a wave of public anxiety. But as the dust settles, a more complicated—and at times, almost comical—picture is emerging: many of these so-called drone incursions are turning out to be nothing more than stars, commercial jets, and celestial phenomena misidentified by anxious observers. Yet, behind the confusion, some incidents point to genuine security threats, leaving authorities and citizens caught between panic and prudence.
According to DroneXL.co, the latest round of mass drone sightings began in September 2025, when a swarm of Russian drones reportedly entered Polish airspace. NATO aircraft scrambled and shot down some of the devices, marking the first direct military encounter between NATO and Russia since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022. Days later, NATO jets intercepted Russian warplanes over Estonia, and soon after, a barrage of drone reports began flooding in from across the continent. Airports in Denmark, Germany, and Norway saw closures or major disruptions, and European defense ministers rushed to agree on building a high-tech “drone wall” to protect their borders.
But as authorities investigated, the lines between real threats and mass hysteria quickly blurred. In Denmark, the government initially sounded the alarm over what Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called “the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date,” after drones allegedly flew over Copenhagen Airport and several military bases. The country borrowed anti-drone equipment from Sweden and the United States, deployed Ukrainian drone specialists, and even prompted NATO to send the German frigate FGS Hamburg to the Baltic Sea. All civilian drone flights were banned nationwide, stranding thousands of travelers.
Yet, as Denmark’s national broadcaster DR.dk quietly revealed, several high-profile “drone” sightings—including those that triggered these dramatic responses—were, in fact, regular airplanes. At least one incident involved a Socata TB-20 Trinidad training aircraft conducting flight exercises. Pilots and ground observers gave conflicting descriptions: what one crew identified as a drone, another called a balloon. Danish authorities have since confirmed these findings internally but have refused to release them publicly, fueling frustration among drone pilots and transparency advocates.
It’s not the first time mass anxiety has turned the night sky into a theater of imagined threats. The Guardian traces similar patterns back to the 1946 “ghost rocket” panic in Sweden, when more than 2,000 sightings of missile-shaped objects were later attributed to meteors and auroras coinciding with the Perseid meteor shower. Even earlier, in the 1930s, Scandinavians mistook Venus and other celestial bodies for hostile Soviet reconnaissance aircraft. More recently, the 2024 “drone panic” in New Jersey saw thousands of reports—ranging from medical helicopters forced to divert, to Coast Guard personnel convinced they were being tailed by drones—later debunked as commercial aircraft, planets, or stars. As Senator Andy Kim admitted, “most of the possible drone sightings that were pointed out to me were almost certainly planes.”
The psychological dynamics at play are powerful. Dr. Beryl Pong, who leads the Centre for Drones and Culture project at the University of Cambridge, explained to The Guardian, “I think the incursions are a way to spook and to provoke… you don’t know what its motivations are, right? It could be benign or, you know, it could just kind of be the end of your life, right there.” When societies feel vulnerable—whether from war, terrorism, or technological change—people start looking up, and every light in the sky becomes a possible threat. Dr. Robert Bartholomew, a senior lecturer in psychological medicine, called the current European situation a “collective anxiety attack where the sky has become a social barometer of the times, driven by the fallibility of human perception and fear.”
Yet, as 1News and DroneXL.co both stress, not every incident is a false alarm. Some drone incursions are real—and serious. A German classified report identified military reconnaissance drones near Munich Airport, while France seized a Russian-linked tanker suspected of launching drones near Denmark. Polish forces have shot down Russian drones violating NATO airspace. In Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein state, authorities are investigating a series of drone flyovers targeting a power plant, a university hospital, and a shipyard. Regional Interior Minister Sabine Sütterlin-Waack described “flying objects of various types and sizes,” and prosecutors have launched criminal investigations.
The challenge, then, is separating real threats from mass misperception. When Danish authorities received 500 tips about drone sightings in 24 hours—some of which turned out to be stars—it became clear that human perception, especially under stress, is deeply unreliable. Skeptical investigator Mick West, who runs the Metabunk forum, has documented how eyewitness accounts often resolve to mundane explanations: “Large stationary drone” is usually a bright star like Betelgeuse; “two small drones” are distant planes; “drone networks” are often planes or satellites moving in patterns.
This confusion has real-world consequences. The panic has led to costly and disruptive measures: Denmark’s nationwide drone ban, Germany’s rush to pass laws allowing the military to shoot down suspected drones, and Switzerland’s allocation of $136 million for counter-drone systems. The proposed European “drone wall” could cost billions, much of it driven by incidents later revealed as misidentifications. Meanwhile, legitimate drone pilots find themselves squeezed by ever-tighter regulations, losing airspace access because of fears stoked by false alarms.
Transparency is in short supply. European authorities have sometimes delayed public acknowledgment of drone overflights, and in some cases, have not confirmed reports at all. As DroneXL.co notes, “Denmark’s refusal to publicly admit which ‘attacks’ were actually training aircraft is particularly galling. Taxpayers deserve to know which NATO deployments and international responses were triggered by phantom threats.”
For now, the sky remains a battleground—not just for drones and security forces, but for the public’s imagination. As history shows, these panics eventually subside when media attention fades, but the regulatory fallout lingers. The lesson from New Jersey, Sweden, and now Europe: better detection technology and more transparency are urgently needed, so that real threats can be addressed without punishing those who follow the rules.
In the end, perhaps the most sobering realization is this: in times of uncertainty, our greatest enemy may not be the drone overhead, but the stories we tell ourselves about what we see in the sky.
