Military investigates leak of Danish navy fleet plan

Denmark’s Defence Command is launching an internal investigation into who allowed DR to see an internal plan for the navy’s future fleet, the broadcaster reports.

The document, signed by Rear Admiral Søren Kjeldsen, head of the Navy Command, was read by DR, which says several military sources confirmed its contents. The Defence Command said the information was not the armed forces’ recommendations for the future fleet and that, because DR described it as a leak, the matter had been reported to the military prosecution service.

The prosecution service investigates and handles military criminal cases. The document was not classified, but was an internal memo, said retired Colonel Eigil Schjønning, a former head of the Army Officers’ School and a member of the Institute for Military Analysis think tank.

Schjønning criticised the decision to investigate, saying the military should respond differently rather than “go into complete lockdown and show how stupid it is.” He said he could understand officials wishing the information had not emerged yet, but argued that the navy’s assessment posed no risk to the public and showed its professional competence.

Schjønning also warned that the navy’s ideas might not have reached the public or politicians if DR had not reported them. He said he had seen reports and memos from the armed services move up through the Defence Command and Defence Ministry without politicians necessarily receiving the underlying facts.

Concerns over documents reaching the public

Jakob Linnet Schmidt, a defence policy researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said the investigation reflected a desire to keep documents within the circles for which they were intended. That matters for workplace culture and trust, he said.

DR has previously reported on internal military documents, including material about staffing shortages on the armed forces’ Arctic inspection ships and the effects of heavy workloads on personnel. The Defence Command and Defence Ministry declined to comment on the criticism.