| Date | 29 Dec 2023 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Incursion |
A Russian missile crossed into Polish airspace for just under three minutes during a large strike wave against Ukraine, tracked throughout by Polish and allied radar. Poland summoned the Russian chargé d'affaires. The duration matters: an object inside national airspace for minutes rather than seconds is a deeper penetration than most of the border incidents logged here.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Sep 2023 | Incursion | Russian drone fragments found in the Danube Delta |
| 30 Sep 2023 | Incursion | Russian drone detected in Romanian airspace during attack on Ukraine |
| 14 Dec 2023 | Incursion | Russian drone crashes on Romanian territory, fighters scrambled |
| 24 Mar 2024 | Incursion | Russian cruise missile violates Polish airspace for 39 seconds |
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.