Denmark's DALO Buys the Saab Giraffe 1X Counter-Drone Radar After a Six-Month Rental Trial

DALO first turned to Saab in October 2025, ahead of EU leaders' security summits in Copenhagen, when it needed rapid air surveillance and drone detection over civil and military sites. Saab delivered the first systems within three days of the request, and Denmark later rented additional units to widen coverage. Those leased radars have now been bought outright. The trigger was real: a September 2025 incursion shut Copenhagen Airport for hours and prompted a brief nationwide ban on civilian drone flights, leaving authorities short of the persistent detection coverage the summits required.

The Giraffe 1X is a compact 3D radar fielded in Denmark as a Compact Radar Module, mountable on a vehicle or fixed position with minimal infrastructure. Saab states it detects and tracks drones, aircraft, helicopters, missiles, rockets, artillery rounds and mortars in high-clutter environments. Carl-Johan Bergholm, head of Saab's Surveillance business, attributed the three-day delivery to Saab's own capacity and the cooperation of Swedish and Danish authorities. Neither Saab nor DALO disclosed a contract value or final quantity for the permanent order.

The proprietary read. This is procurement by demonstration rather than by specification. DALO did not write a requirement and wait for bids; it leased a system, ran it through a live high-threat window, and converted the lease only once the radar had proved itself in service. That sequence inverts the usual European acquisition timeline and suits a counter-drone gap that materialised faster than any tender cycle could answer — though detection is only half the problem, and an order for sensors says nothing about the legal and doctrinal questions of what may be done about the drones once they are seen. Tracked in Signal No. 86.