On Saturday, October 24, an unmanned aerial vehicle was found in Liepna parish, Alūksne district, which is believed to have crashed on October 18th, Latvia's National Armed Forces (NBS) has said.
"The State Police has confirmed that the object found is an unmanned aerial vehicle. Its origin and the circumstances of the incident are currently being investigated. An internal investigation has been launched in the National Armed Forces to assess the circumstances of the incident and the decisions made," said a statement.
It did not say who had found the crashed drone, not the circumstances of its discovery.
The NBS said that on October 18th, information was received about an "explosion-like noise" in Liepna parish, Alūksne region. After receiving information from the State Police, the National Armed Forces began analysis of airspace surveillance system data, during which information was obtained about the possible movement of an unidentified object in Latvian airspace.
Based on the information obtained, the National Armed Forces, in cooperation with the State Police, began a search for the possible crash site. The search continued on October 19th but was called off after two days.
The National Armed Forces attempted to explain why it wasn't able to confirm the existence of the drone, its flight path or crash site, and above all why no alert was issued to people in the area by stressing that "identifying a potential aerial threat requires evaluating data from multiple surveillance systems and a combination of tactical circumstances. The information available at the time of the incident was not sufficient to unambiguously identify the unmanned aerial vehicle and confirm a potential threat, thus the established criteria for distributing a cellular broadcast warning were not met."
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