- “The pilots should see it, engage it on their radar and shoot a missile at it. Here they failed. I would have liked him to take it down. And they would have liked to take it down, for sure. It is a drone that after the first assessments did not have an explosive charge.”
The author of the above statement is the Defense Minister Ionuț Moșteanu in a statement on Tuesday, in the context of the latest and most serious violation of Romanian airspace by a Russian drone.
The sincerity of the government official in the act of public communication is to be appreciated, but it is also stops short.
From officials of this rank, the public opinion expects open and pertinent explanations, but explanations, not findings and justifications. Romania has not seen an incursion of this kind into its airspace for a long time; and especially on its territory – because the Russian drone on Tuesday morning touched the ground and in addition it fell in a relatively populated area, located tens of kilometers from the border.
Under these circumstances, clear answers are mandatory, no matter how indigestible they may be for both the sender and the receiver, no matter how many other new questions will be raised precisely by the answers given by the legal authorities.
And Minister Moșteanu’s answer, although it has the virtue, mentioned above, of having been a (disarmingly) sincere one, leaves numerous gaps and raises legitimate, serial questions: why the drone was not shot down, if the planes were still trailing it, if the pilots still had the approval to shoot, if the Defense Minister would have wanted it to be shot down and, especially given the fact that the longer such a hostile device “walks” through our space, the more the risk of an accident with tragic potential increases?
Even if it had no explosive charge, the dimensions of the drone, the material it is made of and the speed at which it flies are enough to cause damage and/or casualties on the ground.
The drone from Vaslui fell into nature, but the drone from the Republic of Moldova “landed” on the roof of a small building, fortunately not on a residential one.
Another sensitive element resulting from the latest Romanian experience with the Russian drone was also brought up by the Defense Minister: “I will discuss with them as well,” Ionuț Moșteanu said at one point; “they” being the pilots on the fighter planes that were scrambled.
How normal, efficient and procedural is it that the Defense Minister himself has to have this kind of discussions, in this kind of situations, in order to clarify this kind of result?
In war conditions, we know it all too well from the harsh and daily experience of Ukrainian neighbors, drone attacks can use tens or hundreds of aircraft at the same time, and the defensive forces engaged in countering can also involve a large number of aircraft and/or helicopter pilots, as well as a large number of soldiers from the ground forces; and all these can be located in points spread over a large area of territory; and attacks or incursions can occur daily.
Can a minister, in such conditions, personally collect information from all those who had their finger on the trigger? The question is, of course, rhetorical.
Former President Traian Basescu criticized the authorities in Bucharest for their hesitation/failure to shoot down Russian drones entering our airspace.
On Tuesday, however, he raised a sharp issue to which the Defense Ministry must come up with pertinent answers, because the questions that Traian Basescu publicly asked himself are, most likely, also on the lips of other fellow citizens:
- “Either we don’t have the equipment with which to shoot down the drones, although I don’t think so, knowing the equipment with Gepard combat machines that are special for anti-aircraft combat, or we didn’t have the ability to use the equipment we have in such a way as to shoot down the drones.”
- “And so far we have proven that it is in vain that we are full of Eurofighters, in vain are we full of F-16s, in vain we pick them up and say ‘we have raised fighter planes’. Yes, we lifted but no one shot down any drone. So we’re starting to be ridiculous.”
Every aspect of Russia’s hybrid warfare – from disinformation, interference in electoral processes, cyberattacks to incursions by drones or other projectiles – must be met with decisive answers that leave no room for questions or cultivate the impression of superficial or, worse, structural weaknesses.
The story of Russian drones penetrating Romanian airspace reached an intolerable peak on Tuesday.
And even if, fortunately, neither victims nor damages were recorded, this can no longer justify the persistence of the approach so far that the competent authorities in Bucharest have had.
Something is clear that it does not work at the operational level, considering not only what happened, but also the fact that the Minister of Defense himself admitted that he had much higher expectations. And it is also clear that, in case reforms were made after the last failure of this type, those changes were not enough or the right ones, since history has repeated itself.
The credibility and responsiveness of state institutions are of strategic importance in general, but this is even more so in the conditions of a high-intensity conflict on the country’s borders.
Aince Tuesday, the stakes have become terribly high, given that the credibility and capacity of the armed forces are at stake.
The Defense Minister must indeed come back with complete answers, but above all, together with the military leadership of the army, what does not work optimally within the institution on which Romania’s defense depends must be urgently corrected.
