| Date | 21 May 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Incursion |
Drone alerts were issued in parts of Lithuania and Latvia and NATO aircraft were launched in response. No machine was recovered and no attribution was established. The alert came a day after Lithuania's first red air warning, during the most concentrated month of Baltic incursions in the record.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 19 May 2026 | Interception | Romanian F-16 shoots down Ukrainian drone over Estonia |
| 20 May 2026 | Incursion | Lithuania issues first-ever red air warning as drone crosses border |
| 23 May 2026 | Strike | Drone explodes on impact in Latvian lake |
| 23 May 2026 | Interception | Lithuanian border guards bring down homemade drone from Belarus |
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.