Denmark closes key shipping lane after ‘missile fragment failure’

DENMARK’S military warned ships to avoid one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world yesterday after a malfunctioning missile threatened to launch from a naval vessel.

The warning was issued for a seven-kilometre stretch of the Great Belt strait, the main access route to the Baltic Sea. During testing on Danish frigate HDMS Niels Juel the booster on a Harpoon missile was activated but could not then be deactivated, Denmark’s defence ministry said.

Yesterday afternoon, Denmark’s maritime authority told ships to down anchor rather than travel through the tight stretch of sea that passes between the islands of Zealand and Funen. The military said that specialists were on their way to try to solve the problem, but warned that the missile might launch if the issue could not be resolved. “Until the booster is disabled, there is a risk that the missile could launch and fly several kilometres away,” the military said in a statement.

Naval authorities stressed that the missile was not armed and there was “no danger” of it blowing up or travelling further than the booster can propel it. Airspace was also closed in the area around the south-west of the town of Korsor, which lies four kilometres to the south of the Great Belt bridge.

The bridge itself was not affected by the alert and its operator said that it remained open to traffic. The Great Belt is one of the most congested waterways of the planet, with an estimated 20,000 ships that pass through it every year.

The incident has awakened memories of a much more serious malfunction with a Harpoon missile that left several holiday homes in ruins on the island of Zealand.

In 1982, a Harpoon missile fired accidentally from a frigate during a drill and hit a summer house on the island of Zeeland. The explosion destroyed four buildings. It comes a day after the Danish defence minister fired his top military official in an affair relating to a weapons malfunction on a frigate last month.

The Iver Huitfeldt, was engaged in combat with four drones in the Red Sea that had been deployed by Houthi rebels seeking to disrupt shipping.