| Date | 24 Jul 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Interception |
| Location |
Sulina, Tulcea County, Romania
45.16, 29.65 (approximate) |
Romanian radar detected an aerial target 20 km off Sulina flying a Sulina–Brăila–Fetești–Buzău track. Two Italian Eurofighters from the 57th Air Base, two Romanian F-16s from the 86th and an IAR 330 SOCAT helicopter were scrambled, and the drone was visually identified as a Shahed type. One of the Italian fighters fired and missed; the drone was then shot down by a Romanian F-16 near Padina, Buzău. It was the first drone destroyed inside Romanian airspace. The Prosecutor General's Office confirmed the next day, from the wreckage, that it was a Russian Geran-2.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 25 Jul 2026 | Interception | Second Russian drone destroyed by Romanian F-16 in two days |
| 26 Jul 2026 | Interception | Third Russian drone shot down over Romanian territorial waters |
| 27 Jul 2026 | Incursion | Russian drone briefly enters Romanian airspace and returns to Ukraine |
| 30 Jul 2026 | Strike | Russian cruise missile crosses into Poland and detonates in a field |
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.