| Date | 14 Aug 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Interception |
| Location |
Balvi Municipality, Latvia
57.07, 27.46 (approximate) |
NATO fighters on Baltic Air Policing duty destroyed an unidentified drone over the Balvi municipality of eastern Latvia shortly after 04:00 on 14 August, the second such shootdown in Latvian airspace in 2026. Two Italian Eurofighters scrambled from Siauliai in Lithuania and two Turkish F-16s from Amari in Estonia; one of the Eurofighters fired over unpopulated ground. Latvia's military initially attributed the incursion to Russian electronic warfare pushing the aircraft off course without establishing whose drone it was; on 20 August the National Armed Forces confirmed the aircraft was Ukrainian, having entered Latvian airspace from Belarus near Rugāji, most likely diverted by Russian jamming, and withheld the model so as not to compromise Ukrainian operations.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 11 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Untrackable drone delays flights at Hanover airport |
| 13 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Russian drone follows the Chilia branch for ten minutes over Romania |
| 14 Aug 2026 | Strike | Drone crashes and burns in a Tulcea forest five kilometres from Ukraine |
| 16 Aug 2026 | Interception | Drone entering Romania from Moldova is shot down over Galati County |
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.