Foto: BB.LV / Упавший беспилотник
According to the State Police, a report about possible drone debris was received on Saturday morning. Arriving police officers examined a hard-to-reach area of the forest and confirmed the find. The Ministry of Defense of Latvia reported that the discovered drone has foreign origins. Currently, the competent authorities continue to work at the scene and are investigating all the circumstances of the incident. The National Armed Forces have initiated an internal investigation to establish the circumstances of the incident and assess the decisions made by responsible officials. As explained by the NAF, a report of a sound resembling an explosion was received on October 18 in the Liepna parish of the Alūksne region. After receiving information from the State Police, the military began a detailed analysis of data from airspace surveillance systems. During the inspection, signs of a possible movement of an unidentified object in Latvian airspace were detected. Based on the information received, the NAF, in cooperation with the police, organized a search for the presumed crash site of the object. However, after two days of searching, the operations were halted. As the military explained, the information available at that time was insufficient to confirm the fact of the object's fall and determine its possible location. **Why Was the Population Not Warned of the Threat?** The National Armed Forces separately explained why no warning was issued through the mobile alert system during the incident. According to army representatives, identifying a potential aerial threat requires correlating data from several surveillance systems and assessing the overall tactical circumstances. "The information available to the military at the time of the incident was insufficient to unequivocally identify the unmanned aerial vehicle and confirm a possible threat. Therefore, the established criteria for issuing a warning through the mobile alert system were not met," the NAF explained.
