Military forces in Compostela Valley were warned on Tuesday against an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, seized by New People’s Army (NPA) rebels from a team of contractors of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
Military officials remained uncertain as to the whereabouts of the drone after the NPA seized and later released the DENR team late on Monday, after 72 hours of captivity.
Ranking military officials in the province said the communist guerrillas may have started using the UAV, that is equipped with a camera, to spy on detachments and even movements of troops in the province.
If the rebels have been able to operate the drone, then military forces on the ground will be at a disadvantage as they could easily be spotted by the communist guerrillas.
The four contractors have not been able to report to Matthew Cua, founder of the Manila-based contracting firm, Skyeye UAV Services, on the location of the equipment used when they mapped out the area around the interior of Maco, Compostela Valley.
“We are still assessing the situation,” Cua told a news briefing at the DENR regional office here.
Cua was among the Skyeye’s personnel earlier named in a military report as having been taken hostage by a unit of the NPA on Friday in New Leyte, Maco.
Cua clarified that only four Skyeye personnel were taken: Kendrick Wong, Nico Lasaca, Chris Favila and Tim Sabino. A local driver, Jonas Loredo, was also kidnapped.
A statement released on Saturday by the NPA Comval Davao Gulf Subregional Command said it confiscated from them a “sky-surfer drone and two multirotor drones, two laptops and a global-positioning system device.”
“We don’t know yet what happened to the equipment,” he said, adding that he allowed the abducted men “to take their bath, eat and sleep.”
He said he did not ask them yet on what happened to the equipment.
The NPA rebels said in a statement that they released the Skyeye personnel on condition that the contractor would not continue its “surveillance and intelligence activities.”
Cua said the NPAs were probably convinced of the innocent nature of their work on the consistency of the answers of his personnel.
He added that the drone was unlike the spy drones used by the US. He said the drone used in the particular instance in their Maco mapping only has a two-meter wingspan. “Really very small,” he said.
Skyeye owns the drone, and Cua said that UAVs have varying dimensions “depending on the nature and requirement of the work.”
The five persons were released to this city’s Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, but did not disclose the place where the Skyeye personnel were released.
DENR Executive Regional Director Joselyn Marcus Fragada said the contractor was conducting an aerial surveillance of the coffee and cacao plantations allowed under the National Greening Program, the banner reforestation program of the administration, which seeks to restore part of the forest cover of the Philippines.
“We really want to know if there are really plants inside these plantations, and we want to determine the progress of the program,” he said.
Just one lesson learned, he said, “from this experience: we want the Skyeye and other independent contractors to coordinate all their actions with us.”
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