| Date | 28 Jul 2025 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Strike |
| Location |
Gaižiūnai, Lithuania
55.05, 24.31 (approximate) |
An explosive-laden drone launched from Belarus struck a military training area at Gaižiūnai, having overflown the capital Vilnius on its way. The wreckage was not located until 1 August and carried an explosive payload that had to be neutralised by military specialists. The machine was assessed to be a Gerbera — a cheap plywood-and-foam decoy drone built to imitate the Geran-2 on radar and exhaust air defences, though it can also be flown with a warhead.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Jul 2025 | Incursion | Drone launched from Belarus crashes in Lithuania |
| 21 Jul 2025 | Incursion | Four Ukrainian aircraft unintentionally enter Romanian airspace |
| 20 Aug 2025 | Strike | Russian drone crashes and explodes in Osiny, eastern Poland |
| 25 Aug 2025 | Incursion | Ukrainian drone crosses Latvia and explodes in Tartu County |
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.