National airspace - a sieve for Russian drones

The Plauru event could have been avoided if the decision-makers in MApN had done their job. Better said if the General Staff of the Romanian Army had ordered the deployment of Gepard mobile anti-aircraft defense systems in the border area with the Ukrainian ports of Reni and Ismail, to avoid any penetration of the national air space.

That information was provided for the BURSA newspaper by Senator Nicu Fălcoi (USR), vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO member states, former fighter pilot in the Romanian Air Force.

"What should have been done during this period was not done. On site, in that area, you must have a mobile radar to detect drones entering national airspace. For example, we have some Gepard systems, which have mobile radars on board and which are specialized in shooting down such drones. I was firmly convinced that I was already there, in that area, and that, as long as the Russians started bombing a few hundred meters from our citizens, you carried everything you needed to be ready to intervene in case of need. I can find no logical explanation for the fact that the Gepard systems are not on site in the border area with the Ukrainian ports on the Danube. I don't know where we keep these systems now, but they were supposed to be there, in the Danube border area", Nicu Fălcoi told us.

Regarding the information provided by the USR senator, I requested the opinion of the representatives of the Ministry of National Defense.

"Certainly, the mobile radars located on the Gepard could intercept the respective drones, if they are located in the area, but at this moment, I cannot go into operational details. If it will be decided to deploy this equipment (or others) in the area, we will communicate, even for the fact that they will be visible", Brigadier General Constantin Spânu, the spokesperson of the MApN, told us.

In other words, the incident of September 4, 2023 could have been avoided, if the decision-makers in MApN had ordered the deployment of Gepard systems on the border area with Ukraine. We wonder what would have happened if the Shahed drone had fallen on a house or if there had been human casualties. Who among the undecideds at the top of the Romanian Army would be responsible for those losses? How would President Klaus Iohannis, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and Minister Angel Tîlvăr have communicated this fact?

Probably the same as the confusion in the communication recorded during this week, when it took only two days from the denial of the incident, to the confirmation of the crash of the Russian drone on Romanian territory. Furthermore, on September 6, the day of the confirmation, the Romanian Air Force's communique appeared, in which it is transmitted that between September 5-9, training flights are carried out at low altitudes in the national airspace, flights that would have been planned a year ago year.

• Nicu Fălcoi: "We have completely discredited ourselves in the eyes of our partners"

Regarding the inconsistency of official communications on the topic of the Russian drone that fell in Plauru, Senator Nicu Fălcoi told us: "The situation is downright embarrassing, not to use harsher words. The communication from the authorities in Bucharest put me in an embarrassing situation on Tuesday, when, as vice president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I was in Berlin, at the opening of a parliamentary forum of former Soviet states. There I discussed the drone with parliamentarians and experts from Germany, and I claimed that no drone fell on the territory of our country, according to the information received from the authorities in Bucharest. Afterwards we found out that he had actually fallen and that the authorities had miscommunicated. We simply made a laughing stock and completely discredited ourselves in the eyes of our partners, probably including in the eyes of NATO partners. It was also the statement of Mrs. Luminiţa Odobescu, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who gave a "slap on the back of the head" to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine who claimed that the Russian drone fell on our territory, telling him that there was nothing. I was also put in an embarrassing situation in Berlin, due to bad communication from our authorities".

We remind you that the situation regarding the Russian drone was only clarified on Thursday evening by General Daniel Petrescu, the Chief of the Defense Staff, who told Antena 3 that he learned that a drone had crashed in Plauru - Ceatalchioi since Tuesday afternoon, at 17:21, a few minutes after President Klaus Iohannis had categorically denied in a press conference with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg.

"We are talking about elements from a drone, discovered in an unpopulated area. We are not saying for now if it is a Russian drone. It is very likely that he fell from the attacks on Monday morning. We had air pre-alert. The investigations will prove when he came, where he came from, what kind of area he is in. We initially came out with a statement, after the statement given by the Ukrainian authorities. We checked the sensors through the Military Command Center, through the Border Police, we had F16s in the air, and we were very focused on the idea of an explosion on national territory. And it wasn't an explosion on national territory. It is possible that the fuel, diesel with oils, caused the burning of the trees. (...) I received the information about the discovery of the drone shortly after the end of the press conference of President Iohannis that he held on Tuesday at the Cincu military range. I reported to the Minister of Defense, and the Minister immediately informed President Iohannis", General Daniel Petrescu said for the quoted source.

We mention that the Ministry of Defense admitted the existence of the drone on Romanian territory only on Wednesday around noon, although the Geoconfirmed website, specialized in locating certain events, also demonstrated on Tuesday evening that the Russian Shahed drone arrived on the Romanian bank of the Danube on Monday morning , as Ukraine claimed.

The Chief of the Defense General Staff stated that the first investigations were carried out on the spot by military spies ("intelligence structures"), and from Tuesday the Naval Forces soldiers also began to "search" the area. Daniel Petrescu specified that all the data show that there was no intention of the Russian Federation to attack Romania's territory.

"We are now focused on possible attacks on Romanian territory, not on collateral events. I am responsible for everything that happens in the Army, I will not shirk, I am responsible. Now an investigation is going on, we will see how much and how everyone was wrong. I do not agree that this incident caused a crisis of credibility of the Romanian Army. It was a situation that did not present a great danger for the population of Romania", said the head of the Defense Staff.

For his part, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Viorel Pană, also stated for the cited source that the information shows that the entire drone did not fall on Romanian territory, but fragments of an exploded drone, while the Chief of Staff of the Naval Forces , Mihai Panait, said that the military under his command discovered the remains of the drone.

• The information received from Kiev, denied by the Bucharest authorities

We remind you that on Monday, September 4, the Ukrainian authorities declared that a Russian drone would have fallen on Romanian territory, after attacks on the Ismail port. The Romanian authorities denied this information. The Minister of Defense, Angel Tîlvăr, said that "at no time did the means of attack used by the Russian Federation generate direct military threats to the national territory or the territorial waters of Romania".

The Ukrainians, however, continued to claim that this had happened. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, said that there are photos that prove that Russian equipment fell in Romania.

"There is no point in denying that something fell there," Kuleba said of the Romanian authorities.

On Tuesday, September 5, during the visit to the Cincu Military Range, President Klaus Iohannis refuted the statements of officials from Kiev who specified that a Russian drone had fallen on the territory of Romania, a NATO member country.

"I can tell you there was none part, no drone and no other part of any device that arrived in Romania. We have total control over our national space. I have checked absolutely everything and can reassure the population. There was nothing that reached Romania", said President Iohannis.

Klaus Iohannis also added that the Romanian authorities are following "carefully" the attacks that take place just a few hundred meters away from the border of Ukraine with Romania.

• And yet the Russian drone felt in Romania

The next day, September 6, a landing of the Romanian military took place in Ceatalchioi in search of the respective drone, which was led from the spot by Minister Angel Tîlvăr. After a long search, the remains of the drone and the impact crater were found.

The Minister of Defense, Angel Tîlvăr, stated that objects "that can be associated with a drone-type equipment" were found on Romania's territory and that technical checks are needed to accurately establish their origin. Tîlvăr stated that the situation is "primarily attributable to Russia, because it has repeatedly attacked port and civil infrastructures" and that what happened is normal to cause concern among citizens.

"We have to distinguish between an incident and an act of aggression. At the moment, after finding the objects that can be associated with drone-type equipment, we need to do technical checks in order to have all the elements that allow us to judge the situation. I have no reason to believe that it was an act of aggression. (...) This situation is primarily attributable to Russia, because it has repeatedly attacked port and civil infrastructures. (...) There are situations that generate concern and require vigilance measures on our part. What happened naturally causes concern, an element of concern, but we are trying to approach this responsibly and in a calm manner. Romania is not the subject of an immediate threat", declared the Minister of Defense.

Minister Angel Tîlvăr stated that he only had clues about the said drone on Tuesday around 6 p.m. and mentioned that he initially told President Iohannis that no drone had fallen on the territory of our country:

"I provided him with this information because, at the time when I made the first communication on this matter, all the data that I had made available by my colleagues within MApN led to this conclusion. (...) The information we had was correct. Regarding the fact that others came out with a different kind of communication, I want to remind you that when the issue was raised that Russian missiles entered Romania's national space coming from Moldova, others said that the space was violated, and we came out and said it wasn't violated and we were right. And when there was the incident in Poland, there were all kinds of points of view expressed in many places in Europe, and we informed correctly".

• President Iohannis opens the I3M Summit with statements about the drone

On the same day, in the address delivered at the opening of the Summit of the Three Seas Initiative, an event that took place in Bucharest, President Klaus Iohannis said: "I was informed in real time by the Ministry of Defense about this discovery and I requested the investigation by urgency and professionalism of the origin of these components, as well as the moment and circumstances in which they arrived on the territory of Romania. If it is confirmed that these elements come from a Russian drone, such a situation would be completely inadmissible and a serious violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Romania, a NATO allied state. As I mentioned before, these attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, which are war crimes, take place at a very short distance from the Romanian border. However, we are alert and in permanent contact with the other NATO allies. I repeat: within NATO we are very well defended, and Romania benefits from extremely strong security guarantees, the strongest in our entire history".

Later, at the press conference at the end of the I3M Summit, the head of state specified why he initially denied this incident:

"In the situation we are in, in the war situation on our border, we must understand that we have a fluid situation, as the experts say. So today, we have a different situation than yesterday, that is. All our communication has been made in good faith and based on the evidence available to us. We cannot make statements that commit the Romanian State based on assumptions. We have to have evidence for that. The Ministry of Defense informed me, and I believe in good faith, that there are no such parts and that was the communication made public. In the meantime, the situation has changed, such parts have appeared, we have ordered quick, professional checks, after which we will take the next steps. But in the meantime, we have informed the NATO Allies, our ambassador to NATO has been tasked, firstly, to inform the Secretary General, secondly, to inform the Allies, which happened just this morning when our ambassador , within the North Atlantic Council, officially informed all Allies of the incident, the possible incident, and the fact that remains have been found which are very likely to be of a drone.

This is where we are at the moment, and to the extent that research brings new evidence, we can take the next steps and communicate, of course, everything that is found."

The confusion of the official communication from Cotroceni was criticized by the social democrat Vasile Dîncu, former Minister of National Defense.

"The head of state, before asking for an investigation, hastened to deny it. It would probably have been better to wait for an investigation, to see if this really happened. It seemed to me that in the communication of Ukraine, of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, it was about an attack that reached the territory of Romania, so somehow the idea was assumed that it was an attack on the territory of Romania. Now we see only some drone debris that could have come from an explosion, which was in the airspace of Ukraine, but ended up on our territory. We have to see what happens. It is good that the president of Romania, if he can, communicate more precisely when it comes to such a situation. What we can know is the fact that it was not an attack on Romanian territory. It is, however, a violation of our territory, but we do not believe that it is a deliberate violation of a territory that belongs to a NATO country", declared Vasile Dîncu.

• A year and a half of incidents in national airspace, no resignation

This is not the first incident in which Russian missiles have fallen into NATO space. In May, a missile fell on Polish territory. According to the Polish media, it is very likely that it was a Russian missile launched from the territory of Belarus towards Ukraine.

A month ago, on August 3, the authorities in Ceatalchioi/Tulcea county said they saw Russian drones over Romania, part of an attack on Ismail port. The Ministry of Defense denied the reports, saying it had found no concrete evidence.

We also recall the incident of March 10, 2022, two weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine, when a Soviet-made drone, after crossing the airspace of Romania and Hungary, crashed in a park in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The drone was carrying a bomb that disintegrated on contact with the ground, with no casualties recorded, as it did not contain explosives (TNT) but a specific substance.

Investigators would not reveal the drone's intended target or who launched it, but officials in Budapest announced at the time that the Tupolev TU-141 drone had been spotted in Hungarian airspace after being detected over Ukraine and entering through Romania's airspace. At that time, as now in the case of Ceatalchioi, the Romanian authorities were initially taken by surprise, although the respective drone passed through the airspace of our country for three minutes, between 23:23 and 23:26.

"The drone entered Romania from Ukraine, it did not fly over the city of Satu Mare, but the northern part of Satu Mare county, on its way to Hungary. It was out of our airspace in less than 3 minutes. In the present case, several factors must be correlated - the high speed, the low flight height, which makes it difficult for any radar to detect it, as well as the rugged terrain (it is a mountainous area), which was also associated with the weather conditions in that area moment", declared after the incident Brigadier General Constantin Spânu, spokesman of the MApN.

The official stated that the very short time that the drone was in the national airspace did not allow the aviation to be lifted from the ground to intercept it.

Another equally serious incident was recorded on June 8, 2022, when a small twin-engine aircraft, type Beechcraft, with two people on board, flew at low altitude over the airspace of Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria. The Ministry of Defense communicated the fact that the plane took off around 17:30 from Hungary, without having an approved flight plan and without having the transponder-type electronic means of identification turned on, and was intercepted in Hungarian airspace by two military aircraft of the Hungarian Air Force. In Romanian airspace, the aircraft was escorted by four F-16 aircraft, two American and then two Romanian, deployed from the Air Base near Feteşti. The Ministry of Defense also conveyed that the aircraft that arrived in Romania's airspace on the route Oradea - Caransebeş - Drobeta Turnu Severin "did not display hostile or dangerous behavior" and "at no time did the pilot the aircraft did not respond to radio interrogations or visual signals transmitted by intercepting military aircraft, according to international norms".

The aircraft was in Romania's airspace between 17:49 and 19:00, after which it passed into Bulgaria's airspace, according to the information provided by MApN, and was finally abandoned at a disused airport in the neighboring country.

The Bulgarian authorities stated that the Piper PA-23-250 Aztecm aircraft crossed several NATO countries, without a flight plan, with the radio station and transponder turned off, but also unregistered.

According to the statement of the Minister of the Interior of Bulgaria at the time, Boyko Rashkov, the plane took off from Lithuania, passed through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and very little through Serbia to finally arrive in Bulgaria at that airport abandoned by decades. The Bulgarian authorities have not yet found the pilot and the other person on board who disappeared immediately after abandoning the aircraft.

• Nicolae Ciucă: "It was a surveillance device over which control was lost"

In the case of the drone fragments found in Tulcea county, there are no traces of an explosion, but it was a surveillance device that lost control and crashed in our country, said Nicolae Ciucă, former prime minister and former defense minister, on Friday in the governments of Orban and Cîţu, quoted by news.ro. He noted that technology does not help to see everything, so an on-site verification is needed to confirm or deny such information.

"There are aspects that, quite simply, happen in the proximity of Romania, at the border between Romania and Ukraine. (...) It is clear that things should not happen in such a way. We need to be aware, however, that we are in a particularly complex situation from a security point of view, and there is a possibility that, by mistake, such equipment, as this was, was not an explosive device, that I fully understood what happened there that there are no traces of an explosion, but it was a surveillance device that lost control and crashed on Romanian territory. Yes, such things can happen. The fact that until we have a certainty of what can be found on the spot, and here is that many times the technique and technology do not help us to see absolutely everything and it is necessary for the man to go and check on the spot, to confirm or deny such information", declared Nicolae Ciucă.

He stated that it is the duty of the Ministry of National Defense and all the institutions in the system that operate on the border of Romania, on the border with Ukraine, "to assess the situation and implement that surveillance, monitoring and warning device, so that the population of the respective area to be able to be warned in time about the possibility of any danger".