Danish Defence “Establishes New Drone Centre at HCA Airport”

The Dan­ish Defence (DD) has estab­lished a new drone cen­tre at the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Air­port (HCA), close to one of North­ern Europe’s lead­ing test hubs, reports a press release. 

The cen­tre will fur­ther strength­en the Dan­ish airport’s posi­tion as a key loca­tion for drone devel­op­ment and dual-use solu­tions in the region. HCA already fea­tures the renowned UAS Den­mark Test Cen­tre and a suc­cess­ful drone and counter-drone ecosys­tem.

The release states, “It will be respon­si­ble for the train­ing of DD units as well as dri­ve devel­op­ment in the drone field through expe­ri­ence gath­er­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try and research insti­tu­tions.”

It con­tin­ues, “When ful­ly up and run­ning in 2026 the cen­tre, part of an over­all bil­lion-dol­lar scale-up of the Dan­ish Defence, is expect­ed to employ around 100 peo­ple with total invest­ment of close to EUR100 mil­lion over the next decade.”

Michael Larsen, Head of UAS Den­mark Test Cen­tre, com­ment­ed, “This is great news for us and the local drone ecosys­tem. We already have a strong col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Dan­ish Defence, so we view the estab­lish­ment of this new cen­tre as a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther strength­en our ties.”

UAS Den­mark Test Cen­tre was inau­gu­rat­ed in 2013. Last year, it fea­tured more than 5,500 drone oper­a­tions. Today, the Cen­tre has a broad array of test facil­i­ties as well as an almost 3.000 km² big BVLOS flight zone that stretch­es over land and sea and inter­links with a mil­i­tary air­space.

The HCA busi­ness park fea­tures sev­er­al drone and counter-drone com­pa­nies, includ­ing Dan­ish pay­load sup­pli­er, Quad­sat, and drone devel­op­er Thun­der­strike.

Peter Rah­bæk Juel, May­or of Odense, remarked, “With a new nation­al drone cen­tre on the hori­zon, the region cre­at­ed for test­ing and devel­op­ing drones and anti-drone mea­sures, is about to take a mas­sive leap for­ward.”

He con­tin­ued, “With strong syn­er­gies between cut­ting edge research from Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Den­mark, inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies and now a mas­sive invest­ment and pres­ence from the Dan­ish Defence, HCA is becom­ing a Euro­pean drone-hotspot.”

In fact, HCA Air­port is cur­rent­ly expand­ing its busi­ness park by four hectares in order to accom­mo­date fur­ther growth.

Michael Lar­son

Lar­son con­clud­ed, “The war in Ukraine has demon­strat­ed that it is pos­si­ble to move fast and quick­ly deploy new solu­tions, and I hope that we can bring for­ward a sim­i­lar approach here in the Test Cen­tre sand­box.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://hca-airport.dk/en/up-market

https://www.fmn.dk/en

(Images: UAS Den­mark Test Cen­tre)

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