COTABATO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Oct. 23, 2008) – A US military spy plane crashed in North Cotabato province in the southern Philippines where Filipino troops are battling Muslim rebels, reports said.
The unmanned aerial vehicle crashed Oct. 18 on a neighborhood in the town of Pikit after hitting a row of coconut trees. The news of the crash was kept secret by Filipino and US authorities until a local online news site Minda News filed a report about the ill-fated UAV.
It said the UAV, whose wing span was about 8 feet, crashed at night near the house of Eusebio Camancho. Policemen quickly recovered the wreckage of the spy plane and returned the next morning to collect debris of the ill-fated UAV.
“There was no explosion, just a loud thud,” Minda News quoted Camancho as saying.
The UAV is believed one of many spy planes used by US forces deployed in the southern Philippines. US troops are helping Filipino military defeat terrorism.
The unmanned aerial vehicle crashed Oct. 18 on a neighborhood in the town of Pikit after hitting a row of coconut trees. The news of the crash was kept secret by Filipino and US authorities until a local online news site Minda News filed a report about the ill-fated UAV.
It said the UAV, whose wing span was about 8 feet, crashed at night near the house of Eusebio Camancho. Policemen quickly recovered the wreckage of the spy plane and returned the next morning to collect debris of the ill-fated UAV.
“There was no explosion, just a loud thud,” Minda News quoted Camancho as saying.
The UAV is believed one of many spy planes used by US forces deployed in the southern Philippines. US troops are helping Filipino military defeat terrorism.
Camancho said the UAV was made of silvery metal and grey materials, whose parts included rubber tubing and wirings. Its body, he said, measures about 12 inches only.
Police and military declined to comment about the crashed UAV. US military and embassy officials also did not give any statement about the unmanned air craft.
It was not the first time that a US military UAV had crashed in the southern Philippines.
In 2006, villagers in Sulu province held for ransom a crashed unmanned US drone used by the military in tracking down Abu Sayyaf militants whose group is tied to al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya.
The remote-controlled spy plane crashed February 10 in the mountain enclave of Marang in Indanan town. Local television news showed footage of a villager holding the ill-fated UAV, whose wing span was about one meter long and has a slim body and a video camera mounted on its belly.The villagers demanded P100, 000 in exchange for the unmanned aircraft.
Another US unmanned spy plane also crashed in November 2007 during a practice flight in Mount Tumatangis in Sulu. It was unknown if the drone was found or not, but the crash was never reported to the press.In March 2002, a US spy drone called predator also crashed into the sea off Zamboanga City. The UAV went down for a still unknown reason and was also recovered.
The US military has a fleet of various unmanned spy planes, from a palm-size remote-controlled aircraft, to bigger and sophisticated high-altitude; long-range remotely piloted vehicles designed for long-endurance photographic reconnaissance and electronic surveillance missions, and as attack aircrafts.
The US military had used a Philippine Air Force base in Mactan Island in Cebu province in central Philippines as station of its fleet of Orion spy planes. (Mindanao Examiner)
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