U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was in the air over the Mediterranean during drone attack attempt at Hmeimim - Russian Defense Ministry
MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax-AVN) - A U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was patrolling over the Mediterranean Sea during an attack attempt by drones at Russian facilities in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
"A statement of a Pentagon spokesperson that all these technologies 'can easily be obtained in the open market' causes not only our concern, but a legitimate interest as to what technologies are those, where this 'market' is located, and which security service sells space reconnaissance data there. Moreover, it prompts us to take a fresh look at an odd coincidence as to why in particular the U.S. Navy's Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft patrolled over the area of the Mediterranean Sea between Tartus and Hmeimim at an altitude of 7,000 meters for more than four hours during an attack of terrorists' UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] at Russian military facilities in Syria," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement obtained by Interfax-AVN on Tuesday.
"The Russian Defense Ministry's statement on the handover of technologies to terrorists in order to commit UAVs' attack at Russian military facilities in Syria intentionally mentioned neither the involvement of a certain country in that, nor technologies themselves," it said.
"Although, it is necessary to have good training in one of the developed countries only to program controllers of an airplane-type UAV and drop ordnances in accordance to the GPS. And not everyone can obtain precise coordinates on the basis of space reconnaissance data," it said.
"We would like to reiterate that terrorists did not have all of that until recently," the Russian Defense Ministry said.