The crash of the Russian Shahed-type drone was reported by a resident of Gaigalava Parish of Rezekne. The person called 112 and Latvian National Armed Forces (NBS) were informed of the incident shortly after, Latvian Minister of Defence Andris Sprūds admitted in an interview to LTV programme “Viens pret vienu”.
When asked if this means the defence sector wasn’t even aware of this drone flying into Latvian air space and wasn’t being monitored all the way to its crash, Sprūds said “one does not exclude the other, just so there are no misunderstandings here”.
“Of course, this monitoring was being done with limited capabilities,” admitted the minister, explaining that monitoring is done “not just using radars – other institutions can see what is coming in our direction”.
“I would be very cautious with specific information,” he said.
The minister stressed that Latvian army has detection, monitoring and interception capabilities. However, all of them are limited. Detection and monitoring capabilities are fragmented and partial, said the minister.
“That’s why maybe we came to the point that this final stage – the crash – there is information that was reported by a local resident. But once again – it’s not just what’s seen on the radars, there are other options,” he said, stressing again that he will refrain from commenting which information can be viewed differently.
On the 7th of September, a Russian Shahed-type drone crashed in Gaigalava Parish of Rezekne. Latvian National Armed Forces were allegedly monitoring the situation, but the decision to shoot down the drone or deploy NATO interceptors stationed in Latvia was not made in the end. The story caused an uproar among Latvian residents. After the drone crashed, its undetonated warhead was deactivated.
Since this incident, the Latvian defence sector has performed improvements across the board of Latvia’s air space monitoring levels. A specific mechanism was developed to fascinate faster announcements of emergency situations to residents and mass media, as LETA was told by the Ministry of Defence.
The ministry’s released statement claims experts have performed an in-depth analysis of the incident and the response to it from NBS, clearly identifying necessary changes to the system in the process.