Expert: The robot is going to explode in the air – but it persisted in Poland

Polish President Andrzej Duda said it was likely that a robot that crashed in eastern Poland on Tuesday was launched by Ukrainian air defenses and that it was not intentional. He also says it may have been a Russian S-300.

This is a theory that even Rein Bella, a defense systems instructor and artillery expert at the Norwegian Defense Academy, says is highly likely.

– The robot missed its target and then for some reason didn’t explode in the air. Then they flew until it ran out of fuel and exploded in this case in Poland, he says.

Normally, missiles of this type are supposed to explode in the air precisely to avoid hitting the ground, explains Ren Bella. Why they did not do it in this case, he could not say anything about it. The S-300 missile, which was developed during the Soviet era, is a long-range anti-aircraft robot that should be able to sendSignal so that it explodes in the air from the console.

It certainly happened in Ukraine before – it might happen again

Although the S-300 missile is a long-range robot, it cannot be launched all the way to Poland from Russia.

– The missile can travel approximately 175-330 kilometers, and the closest route after I checked from Russia to Poland was about 600 kilometers. It was most likely launched from Ukraine.

Rain Bella says it’s hard to answer how often such an error occurs.

Of course, the older systems get, the more insecure they become. The S-300 is an old system. This has certainly happened in Ukraine before, but then they also landed in Ukraine and then the information did not reach the outside world.

Rain Bella also says that it’s not entirely out of the question that this could happen again.

We see every day that bots miss their targets. If it does not explode in the air, it flies until it runs out of fuel, after which it can end up outside the borders of the state.

Russia and Ukraine both claimed that the robot was not launched by them.