Unmanned Soviet-era drone from Ukraine raises Nato defense concerns

Bloomberg

A six-ton unmanned reconnaissance drone that streaked across eastern Europe from war-ravaged Ukraine and crashed in the Croatian capital has raised awkward questions about Nato’s readiness to protect European airspace.
Startled authorities are asking how none of the three North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) member states — Romania, Hungary and Croatia — reacted as the Soviet-era Tu-141 traversed their respective airspaces at as much as 700 kilometers (435 miles) per hour. Officials point to a lack of coordination between the three governments and with Nato.
“This was a clear and immediate threat to which we should have reacted,” Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, said at the crash site in Zagreb, a park next to a student dormitory where it gouged a 10-foot-wide crater. “We will raise this issue at all levels, since this is an incident that mustn’t be repeated — ever.”
Croatian authorities say the unarmed drone, which was used from the 1970s by the Red Army as well as the post-Soviet Ukrainian military, was launched from Ukrainian territory, though the exact circumstances and its origin are not known. Plenkovic said it is unclear whether the flight was “error or sabotage.”
Investigators in Zagreb are now working with Nato and counterparts in the Ukrainian government on the circumstances of the craft’s launch as well as on traces of explosives reported in an initial finding by the Defense Ministry in Zagreb.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the remnants were part of a self-destruct mechanism with which similar vessels are outfitted.
Nobody was injured in the crash. The 14-meter-long vehicle, whose parachute was partly activated during the fall, damaged several cars. It had flown at an altitude of 1,300 metres (4,264 feet), crossing briefly over Romania. The drone then spent
40 minutes aloft over Hungary and seven minutes in Croatian airspace before going down.