Russians capture cigarette-smuggling drone
Russian border guards near Kaliningrad “detained” a low-flying drone entering the country from Lithuania last week. According to a spokesperson for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), it wasn’t on a spy mission—it was smuggling cigarettes.
The autonomous aircraft, which had a four-meter (13-foot) wingspan, flew close to the ground following GPS waypoints and released cigarette cartons from its cargo bay at designated drop zones. When captured, it was carrying 10 kilograms (about 22 pounds) of illicit cargo.
FSB press service chief Oleg Dzhurayev told the ITAR-TASS news service that the drone was built by a criminal organization operating in Russia and Lithuania, and it may have been used for other smuggling operations. Dzhurayev added that this was the first time Russian authorities have captured a foreign drone in the Kaliningrad region, a Russian “exclave” between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea.
Update: According to a report from NewKaliningrad.ru, the members of the smuggling ring operating the drone have been arrested—and while it was built in Lithuania, the cigarettes were actually being smuggled to Lithuania from Russia. A 31-year old Lithuanian man had crossed the border legally, and met with a 51-year old Kaliningrad region resident, who helped him buy cigarettes to smuggle to Lithuania. The drone was essentially a set of wings on a skeleton of a fuselage, to which the boxes of cigarettes were strapped externally, as shown in the photos above and below:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/russians-capture-cigarette-smuggling-drone/
