A NATO fighter jet has shot down a drone over southeastern Romania after it entered the country’s airspace from neighbouring Moldova, Romania’s Ministry of National Defence has said.
The aircraft was detected by radar at 4.44am on August 16, some 24km north of the city of Galați. An F-18 of the Spanish Air and Space Force, flying a combat air patrol from the 57th air base at Mihail Kogălniceanu, made radar contact and was given permission to engage.
The drone was destroyed at 5.01am over unpopulated ground. The ministry said fragments appeared to have fallen between the villages of Băleni and Cudalbi, in Galați county, in an area close to the Ukrainian border.
Romanian authorities did not identify where the drone had come from. NATO did, with Colonel Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for the alliance’s military headquarters, saying that details remained under investigation but the drone “appears to be Russian”.
Acting defence minister Radu Miruță congratulated the Spanish pilots and the Romanian personnel running the command centre. He said Romania was defending its airspace and that vigilance, rapid response and allied solidarity amounted to concrete guarantees of national security.
Miruță said Romania stood on the front line of European defence because of the 614km land border it shares with Ukraine. Bucharest has recorded repeated incursions since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, as well as sea mines drifting across Black Sea trade and energy routes.
It was the fourth drone brought down over Romanian territory this year. Romanian F-16s destroyed three in as many days in late July, the first time the country had fired on intruding aircraft, after parliament passed a law authorising the military to destroy or neutralise them.
Romania summoned the Russian ambassador after those incidents. The most serious episode came on May 29, when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in Galați and injured two people, prompting NATO to say it stood ready to defend “every inch” of allied territory.
Sunday’s operation was coordinated through the alliance’s Combined Air Operations Centre at Torrejón, near Madrid.
Romania is a member of both NATO and the European Union, and the incursions have fed into the argument in Brussels over the proposed “drone wall” along the bloc’s eastern borders. The European Commission has said the counter-drone initiative should be fully functional by the end of 2027.
