Thursday, March 10, shortly before midnight, the Croatian police received several calls from residents of Zagreb. They evoke a detonation, heard near Jarun Park, a few kilometers from the city center. Some also claim to have seen parachutes. On the spot, the police discovered a crater and damaged cars. They also see two parachutes, hanging from the branches of the trees in the park. The detonation heard by the inhabitants does not come from a bomb or a weapon, it is the sound of the crash of a flying machine. Specifically a military drone.
Flight over Romania and Hungary
“It is a rather serious incident”, reacted Robert Hranj, the chief of staff of the Croatian army. The drone was flying at a speed of 700 km/h at an altitude of 1,300 meters, without any form of apparent control. By crashing into the ground, it dug a crater three meters in diameter and one meter deep, without injuring anyone.
War in Ukraine: the TB2 drone, a low-cost machine that slows down Russian progress
Even more worrying, this drone was not under the control of the Croatian military, but came from abroad. The gear “came to Croatia from Hungary, and according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, he came to Hungary from Romania”, explained Andrej Plenkovic, the head of the Croatian government. The Romanian Ministry of Defense indicated on Friday March 11 that a machine had crossed the airspace of its country from Ukraine in just a few minutes.
The control of the airspace in question
Could the drone be directly linked to the Russian offensive in Ukraine, whose nearest border is more than 500 kilometers from Zagreb? Of military manufacture, the device would be a Tupolev Tu-141, believe several experts. Remote-controlled reconnaissance equipment manufactured in the Soviet era, in the 1970s and 1980s, and today used almost exclusively by the Ukrainian armed forces. An adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, however, denied any involvement of his country. “This drone had no Ukrainian markings, it had red stars on it. This is not a Ukrainian drone”he assured on television.
How drones are changing warfare
The crossing of several countries by this aircraft, in one hour, without authorization and without being shot down proves that it is possible to fly a machine without incident in the European sky over several hundred kilometers. This case highlights the flaws in the functioning of surveillance and anti-aircraft defense systems in Romania, Hungary and Croatia – member countries of the European Union and NATO, while the war is raging a few hundred kilometers from the. Some experts note that the shape of the drone resembles that of a cruise missile.