| Date | 25 Dec 2025 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Incursion |
Poland's National Security Bureau reported dozens of objects entering Polish airspace from Belarus, four of them identified as smuggling balloons. Polish officials described the episode as "a provocation disguised as a smuggling operation" — the same ambiguity Lithuania had been contending with for three months, in which contraband flights and state pressure are difficult to separate.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Dec 2025 | Incursion | Suspected Russian drones overfly Arrow-3 site at Annaburg air base |
| 3 Dec 2025 | Incursion | Vilnius airport shut for tenth time in two months |
| 4 Dec 2025 | Incursion | Five drones overfly French submarine base at Île Longue |
| 15 Dec 2025 | Interception | Turkish F-16 shoots down drone over the Black Sea |
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.