Svalbard is an island in the Arctic, and home to the most northern city in the world. There’s not much there except lots of scenery and wildlife.
“The suspect has admitted flying a drone in Svalbard,” police official Anja Mikkelsen said.
Source: Norway says ‘foreign intelligence’ behind drone flights
Perhaps there is much more to this story than has been revealed to us. But seriously, Svalbard? This is not making much sense.
Suspect governments will again post hysterical press releases with a goal of banning civilian use of R/C model aircraft, as the US FAA had proposed to do, in December 2019. Have you noticed how we rarely see news reports anymore of “drones” terrorizing the skies, often with unfounded alleged sightings that turned out to be different than the initial media reports?
This might be the start of a new government propaganda campaign against R/C model aircraft. The use of consumer quadcopters by both Ukraine and Russian forces seems perfect for governments to demand all users of R/C model aircraft have a remote pilot’s license, file a flight plan before each flight, and have mandatory remote identification on each craft. And perhaps back to the FAA’s original (and unworkable) proposal for all aircraft to transmit their position, once per second, via cell networks, into a global cloud database. Basically the end of the 90 year old radio control aircraft hobby.
Update: This report says Russians are not allowed to fly R/C drones anywhere in Norway. non-EU residents need to register and obtain a Remote Pilot’s Certificate, it says.
Update: Now says the individual carried a fake passport from Brazil and worked for Russian intelligence.
