NEWS · BORRIS, DENMARK

Denmark’s army corrects its timeline: soldiers fired at a ‘drone’ as an airliner passed

A revised report on the 2025 Borris shootings moves the time of the gunfire to the minutes a passenger plane flew over — and reveals a second, earlier shooting.

October 1, 2026 · 2 min read · By The Phenomenon Files

At a press conference in Copenhagen on October 1, Danish Army chief Peter Boysen presented a revised account of shots fired at suspected drones over the Borris military training area in West Jutland in September 2025. Denmark was then in the middle of a drone scare, and Ukrainian soldiers were training at the camp.

The army now says the shots on September 28, 2025 were fired between 20:06 and 20:08 — not around 20:20, as its June report had said. That is exactly when a Widerøe passenger plane flew over the camp: flight data compiled by the broadcaster TV 2 puts it overhead between 20:06:10 and 20:07:20. Boysen said the error came from a combined report written in November 2025. “I take responsibility for that,” he said.

Was the plane in danger?

The army says no. By its figures, the airliner was at least about 2,700 metres away and the rounds peaked at about 1,900 metres. Widerøe says neither crew nor passengers noticed anything.

The revised report also disclosed a second shooting that had not been made public: nine rounds fired at a suspected drone just after 22:30 on September 25, 2025. TV 2 found that a Norwegian Boeing 737 MAX 8 flying from Edinburgh to Copenhagen crossed the area at about 22:34, and that an Air France flight was landing at nearby Billund with its landing lights on between about 22:25 and 22:30.

Drone or airliner?

Two former fighter pilots told TV 2 that soldiers mistaking an aircraft’s lights for a drone is “a possibility.” One, Steen Lee Christensen, said he had once mistaken Venus for a plane. The military maintains that its soldiers saw drones, and says the 737, flying at more than 11 kilometres, was too high to be relevant.

Defence Minister Jeppe Bruus said the armed forces must “get better at stating times correctly” and called suggestions of a cover-up “a very serious claim.” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she still trusts the authorities.

The case shows how hard it is to identify lights in the night sky, even for trained personnel under pressure. The same problem runs through many UFO reports: distance and size can’t be judged against a dark sky, so a distant airliner and a nearby drone can look the same.