Denmark buys Ukrainian-founded firm’s ground drones

Denmark’s armed forces have taken delivery of nine unmanned ground vehicles built by Dropla, a Danish company founded by Ukrainians, to train drone operators, including conscripts, at the country’s military drone center.

Denmark’s defense procurement agency, known by its Danish initials FMI, bought the Dropla 4×4 vehicles for the Danish Defence Drone Center, the agency said Sept. 28. An unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, is a vehicle that drives itself or is steered remotely with no crew aboard. The agency did not disclose the price of the order or when the vehicles arrived.

The Danish version of the Dropla 4×4 was delivered without a weapon mount. FMI said it is already studying how to fit the vehicles with extra equipment such as a remotely operated weapon station, which lets a soldier aim and fire a machine gun from a safe distance, and new communications gear. The agency said those plans draw on lessons from the war in Ukraine and on its own trials of other UGVs in Denmark.

Colonel Thomas Øgendahl Knudsen, who heads FMI’s land division, said unmanned systems are developing quickly, so the Danish military needs to build experience with them and bring them into soldier training now. He said the new vehicles let the drone center work with ground drones while exploring how the technology could be used across the armed forces in the future.

The purchase is FMI’s second batch of UGVs this year. Earlier in 2026, the agency bought eight unmanned ground vehicles for the Danish Army, which FMI said have since been tested in a range of operational scenarios with strong results.

Dropla Tech was founded in 2023 by four Ukrainian entrepreneurs and is headquartered in Odense, Denmark, with its engineering and operations teams working in Ukraine. The company is best known for Blue Eyes, an artificial intelligence system that detects mines, improvised explosive devices and loitering drones without needing a cloud connection. Dropla says the system has confirmed more than 5,000 explosive threats in Ukraine.

The company builds two modular UGV platforms, the Dropla 4×4 and Dropla 6×6. Both can be configured for casualty evacuation, cargo delivery, reconnaissance, remote weapon stations and counter-drone missions. Dropla has also signed an agreement with Ukrainian company Frontline Robotics to integrate its Burya weapon turret onto the vehicles.

The Danish military has worked with Dropla before. During a six-month innovation project that ended this summer, the armed forces tested a Dropla prototype built for evacuation and logistics. That vehicle started out with four wheels but was fitted with two more on the military’s recommendation to make it more stable.

Dropla raised €2.4 million ($2.7 million) in 2025 from investors including Denmark’s state Export and Investment Fund, and in July 2026 it received an undisclosed investment from U.S.-Ukrainian group MITS Capital. The company says it wants to scale production to as many as 3,000 UGVs a year.