| Date | 8 Aug 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Strike |
| Location |
Kardam, Bulgaria
43.75, 28.11 (approximate) |
Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev announced that a drone had crossed into Bulgarian airspace from Romania and exploded in a field near the Kardam border crossing, just inside Bulgaria. Neither country detected it on radar; Romanian border police recorded its sound before a Bulgarian patrol saw smoke rising from a sunflower field. There were no casualties or damage. A border police unit specialising in drone detection and electronic countermeasures was moved from the Turkish border to the Romanian one. Preliminary analysis of the debris indicated a Ukrainian Maya decoy drone; Ukrainian officials denied targeting Bulgaria deliberately.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 7 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Two drones overfly German military base at Mechernich |
| 9 Aug 2026 | Strike | Russian drone explodes near Crocmaz, breaking windows |
| 10 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Russian Geran-3 crosses Moldovan airspace for one minute |
| 11 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Untrackable drone delays flights at Hanover airport |
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.