Representatives of the Ministry of National Defence assured on Friday that 'the situation is under control', stressing that Romania is not facing an attack, but rather the effects of a conflict taking place in the immediate vicinity of its border.

'I would like to state very clearly that the situation is under control. We are not facing an attack on Romania; we are facing the effects of a conflict taking place very close to our border. Unfortunately, this has direct consequences for the population in the area. The structures of the Romanian Armed Forces, together with the other state institutions, are continuously monitoring the airspace and are prepared to respond whenever the situation requires,' Deputy Commander of the Joint Forces Command, Brigadier General Gheorghe Maxim, told a press conference at the headquarters of the Ministry of National Defence.

According to him, during the attack on Ukrainian port infrastructure, the procedures established for such situations were implemented, including the alerting and scrambling of aircraft on Air Policing combat duty, namely two F-16 aircraft from the 86th Air Base at Fetesti and one IAR 330 Puma SOCAT helicopter.

'The pilots of the aircraft were authorised to engage the aerial target under conditions that ensured the safety of the population and of the objectives in the area. The drone that caused the incident in Galati was detected at 1:46 am, 19 kilometres east of Reni. It entered Romanian airspace at 1:52 am and was lost from radar at 1:56 am, after travelling approximately 10 kilometres through national airspace. The decision to engage an aerial target is based on confirmed information and on a continuous assessment of the operational situation in the area,' Maxim stated.

The general stressed that the time available for taking a decision on whether to shoot down a drone is 'extremely short'.

'In the case of small drones flying at low altitude and at relatively low speeds, the time available for identification, assessment, classification as an aerial threat, and for taking a decision to engage and neutralise it is sometimes extremely short. A pilot's decision whether or not to engage a hostile drone in national airspace is based on a rigorous risk management calculation. Any engagement above an urban area presents significant risks to the safety of the population and infrastructure. In many situations, the debris resulting from the engagement of an aerial object can produce effects comparable to, or even more serious than, the impact of the drone itself - a drone about which, at that moment, we did not know whether it carried a warhead or was merely a decoy drone. All available data have already been analysed in order to establish the exact sequence of events, and it was concluded that there were no real opportunities to engage it safely,' Gheorghe Maxim said. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Mihai Stoica; EN - writing by: Cristina Zaharia)