Yesterday, Portuguese Minister of Defense José Aguiar Branco visited the Vietnese Navy, on the outskirts of Lisbon, the large operational base of the Portuguese Army. Flanked by the Chief of Army Staff, he had come to witness the first launch of a Portuguese-made military drone, supposed to ensure the surveillance of the Lusitanian coasts.
7NpemFgUH08 video
Unfortunately, the “baptism” of the unmanned apparatus, designed by the Portuguese high-tech company Tekever, was not crowned with success. In front of the cameras of several media outlets, who came to cover the event, the drone, launched by a disguised soldier, swerved directly into the river. The photos were also taken by amateurs and are already making the rounds on social networks. the register epsilon Title : “The Navy tried to convince the minister, but the drone fell into the river.”
quoted Diario de NoticiasThe defense minister said the launch failure “justifies that it is always necessary to invest a lot in training so that missions do not fail on time.” But he announced before the event that the drone would be “extremely effective in the tasks that the Navy will have to accomplish.” lusa press agency, Quote by the website online Notícias ao MinutoAnd It indicates that the project has accumulated a large number of failures and that the company that created and developed the simulator went bankrupt a few years ago.
In a country hit hard by the economic crisis, the Portuguese army’s budget had been systematically decreasing for several years. Thus, if José Aguiar Branco declares that “it is necessary to update the training and simulation conditions” of the Navy, he also recalls that “the necessary conditions can only be achieved if we can balance our public accounts […] It is also necessary to have better financial conditions.” Stung by the apparent cuts in salaries and pensions, the Portuguese military has expressed its indignation several times since the beginning of the crisis, including on the streets of Lisbon.
The Portuguese Navy has recently been implicated in a corruption case linked to the purchase of two submarines from a German company, As he remembers Der Spiegel (A Portuguese admiral took more than 1 million euros in bribes from the German company Ferrostaal). The contract, which was signed when José Manuel Barroso was prime minister, shook up a large part of the national public opinion, and the purchase of two submarines was deemed completely disproportionate and unnecessary.
