| Date | 25 Jul 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Interception |
A second drone was destroyed by a Romanian F-16 in as many days. A group of drones was picked up by radar north-west of Snake Island at 06:21 during an attack on Ukrainian infrastructure, and two F-16s were launched. At 08:22 one drone was detected inside Romanian airspace, and eleven minutes later the same pilot who had engaged the previous day shot it down over Sfântu Gheorghe, Tulcea, close to the Ukrainian border.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Jul 2026 | Interception | Romanian F-16 downs Russian drone over the Danube Delta |
| 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.