A large drone packed with explosives blew up on Saturday morning near the Transbalkan gas pipeline in northeastern Bulgaria, close to the border with Romania. The aircraft entered Bulgarian airspace from Romania and detonated about a kilometer from a compressor station of the pipeline running from Turkey to Ukraine.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radew, quoted by AFP, wrote on social media that the device went down near the border post at Kardam. He said the machine was not a recreational drone but a larger type. The area has been cordoned off, and teams from the Interior Ministry and the Defense Ministry are trying to identify the drone.
Radew said the aircraft had escaped detection by both Romanian and Bulgarian air defenses.
– The drone was not detected either in the Romanian or in our airspace, and detecting and identifying drones remains a serious challenge – said Rumen Radew.
– One thing is certain: the drone carried a significant amount of explosives, since it was heard from a distance and caused so much black smoke – said Rumen Radew.
Bulgaria tightens border defenses
Bulgaria’s response follows recent downings of Shahed drones by Romanian air force units. The Defense Ministry has strengthened its radar range and observation capabilities in the region and has regrouped forces and assets to counter low-flying air targets.
Radew said monitoring would continue and that border guard units would be repositioned after the explosion. Their task will be to detect and fight drones along the entire stretch from the Turkish border to the Romanian border. Security at strategic facilities has already been reinforced. He said the incident highlighted the consequences of years of delays in deliveries of modern, digital, three-coordinate radars for the Bulgarian army, and that the Defense Ministry was making every effort to speed up their purchase.
NATO allies face more drone incidents
In recent weeks, other NATO countries in Europe that support Ukraine have reported an increase in drone activity. Romania scrambled fighter jets five times last month after foreign unmanned aircraft entered its airspace. In early June, the Romanian defense ministry reported a sea drone explosion in the port of Constanta; emergency services activated the Red Intervention Plan, and Digi24 reported that four more water drones were found nearby.
In May, The New York Times reported that Romania considered invoking Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty after a Russian drone hit a residential building in Galati. Around the same time, NATO aircraft shot down a drone over Latvia for the first time over that country’s territory.
Poland faced a separate intrusion in the early hours of July 30. A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile entered Polish airspace at 3:40 a.m. and landed on a field in Tarnawa-Kolonia in the Lublin region six minutes later. Polish air defense systems monitored it, and an F-16 fighter was scrambled for identification, but the military decided not to shoot the missile down because its trajectory pointed to uninhabited terrain.
Źródło: Polsat News, Fot. Polsat News
