| Date | 30 Sep 2023 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Incursion |
The Romanian defence ministry reported detecting a Russian drone inside national airspace during an overnight drone attack on Ukraine. The pattern was by then established: strikes aimed at the Danube ports repeatedly pushed munitions a few kilometres across the border, close enough for Romanian radar to track them.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Aug 2023 | Incursion | Two Belarusian helicopters violate Polish airspace |
| 13 Sep 2023 | Incursion | Russian drone fragments found in the Danube Delta |
| 14 Dec 2023 | Incursion | Russian drone crashes on Romanian territory, fighters scrambled |
| 29 Dec 2023 | Incursion | Russian missile crosses Polish airspace for three minutes |
GlobalMilitary.net's 2026 inventory snapshot shows nine NATO members — Iceland, Luxembourg, the three Baltic states, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Slovenia — hold no fixed-wing fighters, attack aircraft or bombers and depend on Allied air policing.
GlobalMilitary.net's incident log counts 45 established violations of European airspace between January 1 and August 16, 2026, against 31 for the whole of 2025 - and almost all of the growth sits in incidents that ended with a shootdown or an explosion on the ground.
An Italian Eurofighter on NATO Baltic Air Policing duty destroyed an unidentified drone over eastern Latvia before dawn on 14 August, the second time the alliance's quick-reaction force has shot one down over the country this year.