An unprecedented event took place about two weeks ago in the port of Joya Tauro, when the opening of six containers that arrived on two ships from China resulted in the detection of Wing Long II model unmanned aerial vehicles.
Each of the drones is 10 meters long, has a wingspan of about 20 meters and weighs about 3 tons. The components were removed in a unique way, in which they were buried as wind turbines, and according to the British Times, they arrived on the ship MSC Arina (Arina) directly from China. Along with the abnormal goods, two operating stations were also put into the containers. “The drones were removed as replicas of wind turbine blades, to avoid inspections,” the Italian customs said. “On one of the drones was written the slogan ‘Energy will save the world’.”
The target of the drones was Khalifa Haftar’s forces in Libya, with the smuggling intended to circumvent a UN embargo. From Italy, the shipment was supposed to skip re-exporting to Benghazi. This is a routine process that happens in the world of goods where a container from country A is unloaded from a ship to a dock in country C, when the international shipper tells customs that he is not transferring the container – and it is reloaded onto another ship on its way to a port in country B. This, apparently, was the Sino-Libyan plan. The reason why, unusually, they managed to capture the shipment is American intelligence that was passed on to the Italian authorities. According to the “Defense News” website.
This capture is added to a previous event that happened in Canada at all in the month of April. At that time, the Canadian police arrested two Libyan citizens who live in the country and were working to purchase drones made in China in exchange for Libyan oil. Fathi bin Ahmed Mahawak and Mahmoud Muhammad Alsawaya Saya were former employees of the International Civil Aviation Organization, which belongs to the United Nations.
Wing Long II is a UAV that is used by many advanced militaries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In Abu Dhabi, the leader Mohammed bin Zayed has been getting closer to China in recent months. In May, the Chief of Staff of the United Arab Emirates Army, General Salah Mohammed bin Majran Al- Amri, met at the headquarters of the Chinese Ministry of Defense with the commander of the Chinese Air Force, General Chang Dingyu. It is not impossible that the meeting stems from the fact that Abu Dhabi was waiting for the promotion of the F-35 deal with the US, and turned to take an interest in China’s fifth-generation fighter jet, the Chengdu J-20, whose picture appeared on the wall near Al-Amari and Dingyu.
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