A Romanian F-16 fighter jet has shot down a drone that entered Romania's airspace without permission, the defense ministry said today, quoted by Reuters, BTA reports.
This is the third such incident in the last three days.
“The drone was shot down safely 12 kilometers northeast of Sulina, in national airspace over territorial waters“, the ministry said in a statement.
The Romanian Ministry of National Defense announced yesterday that the same F-16 fighter pilot shot down both drones that violated Romanian airspace yesterday and today, the news site reports Ziare.
"This morning at 8:22 a.m., the same Romanian pilot with the same F-16 fighter jet of the Romanian Air Force, assisted by the same colleague, shot down a second drone that entered Romanian airspace," the ministry reported in a Facebook post.
The institution notes that the drone was shot down over an uninhabited area near the border with Ukraine.
Two F-16 "Fighting Falcon" of the Romanian Air Force, performing airspace protection missions, intercepted the aerial target and carried out standard identification and neutralization procedures, the ministry also said.
The population in the eastern Tulcea county received a warning this morning through the RO-ALERT system about the possibility of objects falling from the airspace and a recommendation to seek safe shelter.
At the same time, Defense Minister Radi Miruca pointed out that today's action in Tulcea county lasted only 11 minutes, unlike yesterday's case, when a drone was shot down over Buzău county 83 minutes after it was detected by radars when entering Romanian airspace.
According to him, the shooting down of the drone this morning near the village of Sfântu Gheorghe is "clear proof of the Romanian Army's determination that such illegal intrusions will not be tolerated. tolerated".
"In 11 minutes they managed to detect the target with the on-board radar, identify a safe area in which it could be attacked, target it and shoot it down", the minister emphasized, referring to the pilots who participated in the operation.
He pointed out that there is still no information about the origin of the drone and an investigation is pending.
Regarding the drone shot down yesterday, the Prosecutor General's Office announced that it was found to be a "Shahed" type.