Colonel Cristian Popovici, the head of MapN's Information and Public Relations Directorate, explained on Friday morning why the planes raised from the ground by the Romanian Air Force did not shoot down the drone that crashed on a block of flats in Galati.
“It is a legitimate question. Citizens must know that the military has very strict limitations in this situation because we cannot risk creating more threats than we can prevent. The law allows us to open fire in certain circumstances on these objects used in the conflict in Ukraine. But under the conditions in which the lives of the population and property are protected,” said Popovici, on Digi 24, when asked why the pilots did not fire on the drone before it crashed and exploded on a 10-storey block in the municipality of Galați.
The colonel explained that in other missions so far the pilots always knew where the drone was.
“We reconfigured our defense device as proof that compared to the last time when we lost it at the entrance to the country and we didn't even know where it went. We later found out that it hit that household. This time, by reconfiguring the radars, we tracked it continuously and lost it when the altitude no longer allowed the radars from a technical point of view,” Popovici said.
