{"id":83759,"date":"2026-04-05T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/technical-fault-forces-frontex-operated-drone-to-ditch-at-sea\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T20:16:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:16:00","slug":"technical-fault-forces-frontex-operated-drone-to-ditch-at-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/technical-fault-forces-frontex-operated-drone-to-ditch-at-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Technical fault forces Frontex-operated drone to ditch at sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Technical fault forces Frontex-operated drone to ditch at sea<\/p>\n<p>A Frontex-operated unmanned aerial vehicle was forced to ditch at sea on Sunday morning after experiencing technical difficulties, the Armed Forces of Malta said.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Facebook, the AFM said that the Heron 1 UAV encountered a fault earlier in the day and was forced to land in the sea.<\/p>\n<p>The drone was being operated by Frontex as part of its maritime border surveillance operations in the Central Mediterranean.<\/p>\n<p>The AFM said it had deployed assets to the area to locate and secure the unmanned aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>No further details were immediately provided on the cause or the location of the aircraft at the time of publication.<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Wikimedia<\/p>\n<p>RSS Feed Source: Independent Malta <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.com.mt\/articles\/2026-04-05\/local-news\/Technical-fault-forces-Frontex-operated-drone-to-ditch-at-sea-6736288550\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Technical fault forces Frontex-operated drone to ditch at sea<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Technical fault forces Frontex-operated drone to ditch at sea A Frontex-operated unmanned aerial vehicle was forced to ditch at sea on Sunday morning after experiencing technical difficulties, the Armed Forces of Malta said. In a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2139],"tags":[1850],"class_list":["post-83759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malta-news","tag-abatement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}