Colombo, April 20 (IANS): Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) on Saturday morning successfully launched military drones for the first time to aid rescue operations to locate a fishing boat that had gone missing with three people on board.
The MNDF said in an online post that they used the three drones that were brought to the country last month, Xinhua news agency reported.
The MNDF said the diving boat "Farihi 2" was reported missing at 23:30 hours on Friday night, and they recovered the boat on Saturday evening thanks to the drones.
Maldives in March introduced Turkish-built Bayraktar TB2 drones into service while standing up a new Air Corps tasked with monitoring the sea areas.