President Milanović on crash of unmanned aircraft in Zagreb: this is a serious incident, I demand precise information as to how it came about

6 comments

  3. >What I wonder is, how is it possible that an unsophisticated drone had flown unnoticed for nearly an hour in the air space of NATO member states, and that nobody noticed.

    Well, Ireland apparently doesn’t have any primary radar systems. Does Hungary? If so, what’s their coverage?

    Update: For Hungarian military radar:

    https://www.army-technology.com/news/hungarian-armed-forces-advanced-radar-systems/

    > Hungarian armed forces to procure advanced radar systems

    –

    >IAI vice-president and ELTA CEO Yoav Tourgeman said: “IAI/ELTA Systems congratulate Rheinmetall for the 3D Air Defence and Artillery radar programme for the Hungarians Defence Forces.

    –

    >The deliveries are slated to begin at the end of 2022 and continue to the end of 2027.

    So apparently they’d been planning to start getting some air defense radars at the end of the year. Dunno what the situation is now.

    Update 2: Some (apparently from a student officer) report on the Hungarian air defense radar situation, which doesn’t sound super-promising:

    https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/16287863.pdf

    This is mostly talking about WW2, then for whatever reason jumps forward to talking about the current Hungarian air defense situation in the conclusion. Not dated, but references 9/11, so it must be from no earlier than 2001.

    > It would also be useful in our days if the “small states” paid more attention to this system of organisation and equipment so effective for security. Even though there is little chance for a traditional war in Europe,

    Hah!

    > …but the events of 9/11 demonstrated that there are new dimensions of air threats.

    (He’s talking about hijackers turning off aircraft transponders to make them invisible to countries that don’t have coverage from primary radars.)

    >Hungary and the Hungarian defence forces must have the following systems for the proper security and defence:
    >
    > 1. A basic radar system that continuously provides the minimally needed coverage. This can be achieved by the deployment and usage of 3 high performance NATO radars.
    >
    > 2. A mobile radar system. With its help it would be possible to extend the radio location area in a given direction, with given requirements.
    >
    > 3. The most critical part of the system is the lack of air reconnaissance. The Hungarian Defence Forces do not possess their own satellite system;there are no AWACS, not even „balloon” radar. The fulfilment of these necessities is not expected in the near future.
    >
    > 4. The database of the civilian air traffic control has been used but the recce of the air combat equipment cannot be based on a secondary system whose identification capability, disturbance defence is highly limited from the military point of view, not to mention the fixed location (Korishegy, Puspokladany, Ferihegy )

    So at least at that time, it sounds like civil radar in Hungary was based on secondary radar. This sends out an interrogatory message and waits for the aircraft to transmit a response; it cannot detect aircraft that do not have transponders active. It isn’t listening for reflections off the aircraft’s skin.

    Update 3: I think that radar coverage here kind of illustrates the reasons why having some kind of a shared defense budget in Europe makes some sense. The Croatian government here is upset that something penetrated all the way through Hungarian airspace for 40 minutes to Croatia without being detected, then excused Croatia not picking it up by saying that it was only in Croatian airspace for 7 minutes. That is, Croatia has an interest in having primary radar coverage in Hungary; the same is probably true of other EU member states, who would rather find out sooner rather than later that something is heading their way. However, as it stands, I don’t believe that their security is priced into what member states off to the east are procuring…

  5. Imagine this fell down in Fankfurt.

    We are lucky that Russians are sending their old dro es to test NATO defense system.

    East Europe and Balkans are fucked from air.

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