Romania has not yet identified the origin or target of the drone that was shot down by an F-16 fighter jet in its airspace at around 11 a.m. today, but it appears to have been a "Shahed", said the Chief of the Army General Staff, Georgita Vlad, quoted by Reuters, BTA reported.
"Visually, the pilots reported that the drone looked like the "Shahed" type, he told reporters, adding that it was too early to draw conclusions, as a number of technical details about the drone are yet to be established after an investigation.
He said that the decision to shoot down the foreign aircraft was taken immediately after it was violated Romanian airspace and added that it was continuously escorted by fighter jets from the moment it entered the airspace.
The Ministry of Defense announced today that after detecting the object, two "Eurofighter Typhoon" aircraft of the Italian Air Force and two F-16 aircraft of the Romanian Air Force, performing an airspace protection mission, were scrambled, Agerpres reported.
The institution specified that the strike was carried out more than an hour after it entered the country's airspace near the town of Sulina, Tulcea County, over an uninhabited area near the village of Padina, Buzau County, after the foreign aircraft was observed along its entire route.
Georgica Vlad added that the drone shot down today had a different trajectory compared to previous cases in which unmanned aircraft entered the the country's airspace, Reuters also reports.
He said that Russian attacks on Ukraine in the Odessa region had been intense overnight.
The Chief of the General Staff expressed his expectation that Ukrainian ships carrying grain would continue to be targeted in the Black Sea as the harvest season begins.
After a Romanian Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down a drone that violated Romanian airspace this morning, representatives of the Ministry of National Defense explained how the situation had come to this, local media reported, noting that this was the first such case on Romanian territory.
The information was initially reported by President Nikusor Dan, who specified that the incident occurred at around 11 a.m. The Romanian president said that the area where the drone was detected was uninhabited, which allowed the pilot to open fire from above.
The radar surveillance system of the Ministry of Defense detected an air target at 9:39 a.m. today at a distance of about 20 kilometers east of the city of Sulina, located at the mouth of the Danube River to the Ukrainian border, where it entered the national airspace. It was moving along the Sulina-Braila-Fetești-Buzău route, the statement said, BTA reported.
"Two "Eurofighter Typhoon" fighters of the Italian Air Force from the 57th Air Base "Mihail Cogalnicanu" and two F-16 fighters of the Romanian Air Force from the 86th Air Base in Fetești, performing an airspace security mission, took off at 9:48 a.m. and 10:56 a.m., respectively, to monitor the situation," the statement said. ministry. The Chief of the General Staff said that the pilots had visually identified the drone as a "Shahed" type, Geran-2, but an investigation is still underway to establish its origin, purpose and other technical details.