My wife Carolina watches the Portuguese news online. Because of that she is usually a couple of days behind the events as the news usually report what has happened in the previous 24 hours or so and then we add the 1~2 days delay when she actually sees them. So I guess she is starting to get annoyed of hearing me saying "oh that is old news, it happened a while already" when I overhear something or when she comes to talk about a development in the Putin's Invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday she was watching the report about the military drone that crashed in Zagreb, Croatia. I had seen that mentioned in Twitter but didn't check on it later to see if there had been some new conclusions.
What was clear to me was that a military drone, supposedly with a bomb, flying all the way to Zagreb was weird. Most of the recent drones used in Ukraine, such as the now famous Bayraktar TB2, have a range of a couple hundred km, so no way one would get lost and fly on its own all the way to Croatia. Also because, even though the distance between the 2 countries borders is shorter than 500 km, the fighting is occurring further east in Ukraine and Zagreb is not near the easternmost point of Croatia.
What I had seen on Twitter was the theory that the drone operator had put an incorrect name of the supposed target so the drone flew in the wrong direction until the operator lost signal and the drone crashed when the fuel ran out.
But I decided to investigate further on my own and checked what the news said about this at the time (the crash was on the 10-Mar, most of the news report came out the next couple of days).
The drone was a Tupolev Tu-141, from the Soviet era. Actually a big drone, with a length of more than 14 meters, a wingspan of almost 4 meters and weighing more than 6 tonnes. With a range of 1000 km, it could definitely have come from Ukraine.
The Croatian authorities mentioned the drone had cyrillic text and a red star. The red star suggests it is a Russian aircraft however Russia does not operate this drone anymore. The Ukrainian Air Force is the only known operator of this drone, having re-activated it to use in the Donbas conflict (since 2014). 2 of these ukrainian drones have been confirmed as destroyed during the current invasion.
One thing though is that the Tu-141 is a reconnaissance drone, it was not designed to carry weapons and up till now there is no indication that Ukraine converted them to carry (and drop) bombs. There is also a picture of a shutdown drone of the same model with the (infamous) Z markings. Some people on Twitter are claiming that Russia re-activated their stored drones to trick the Ukrainians. It is all speculation..
I did wonder if it would be possible for the separatists in Donbas to have some of their own (captured from Ukrainians during the past 8 years) and were using them now. But still the range has to be considered.
So I went online and got a map with a 1000 km radius centered in Zagreb as per the image on top.
The greyed area is the North and East of the radius, meaning the drone could have come from anywhere in that area (Zagreb is by the blue arrow) with a full tank of fuel.
This is well outside any known Russian positions (roughly represented by the red line, and that is not even accurate, just a sort of curve from the westernmost known positions). The separatists from Donbas are further east.
It also needs to be considered that the reports state the drone flew a little bit over Romanian airspace and mostly over Hungary's. So it couldn't have come from the southern region of Ukraine (that would have caused the drone to fly a lot more in Romanian airspace).
There were other claims stating the drone was launched by ukrainians around Odesa but the Russians jammed it electronically causing it to turn west and continue until it crashed. Again unlikely based on trajectory and range.
Although one have to consider that a drone of this type, that in reality is just like a plane, will not drop like a stone when the fuel ends, but will continue to glide and gradually lose altitude. Based on the service ceiling of the Tu-141, it would have glided for a maximum of 60 km after engine shutdown (no more fuel). I didn't consider that for the radius and the map above, but it doesn't change much.
If the Russians did launch this drone, as per the red start symbol drawn in it, then it had to come from Belarus, namely the Brest area, where there is a big concentration of forces (the red circle and arrow in the map). But this means it would have to first fly South and then at some point turn West, as it crossed Romania airspace and then Hungary. Flying straight from Brest would not match the known trajectory.
I didn't mark in the map another region where Russian troops are located, TransnÃstria, the self-proclaimed russian republic in the East of Moldova (in the same style of Donetsk e Luhansk); it's inside the radius but it would require the drone to follow a deviated route (that would reduce the range) to match the known flying trajectory. I also think that chance is very unlikely.
So what gives then? I find this case very strange and there is no satisfactory theory at this point. Not all things match but it seems clear the drone couldn't come from Russia's controlled territory inside Ukraine.
Most likely the Ukrainians launched it in a secure area in their Western region and something went wrong, causing the drone to fly in the opposite direction that it was meant to.
But why did the drone had the red star marking since the ukrainian Tu-141s have the blue and yellow trident symbol? Were the Ukrainians attempting a false-flag operation of their own (there were several warnings that the Russians would try do just that)?
Hopefully one day someone will find out where the hell this drone came from and why did it flew in the direction of Zagreb...
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