| Date | 24 Aug 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Strike |
| Location |
Ciuslea, Vrancea County, Romania
45.79, 27.31 (approximate) |
Moldovan air surveillance tracked an unidentified drone crossing from Vynohradivka in Odesa Oblast at 05:55 on 24 August 2026, passing over Vulcanesti in Gagauzia and leaving near Pascani, in the Cahul district, towards Romania at 06:09; airspace over southern Moldova was closed for fifteen minutes. Romanian radar picked up intermittent signals over Cahul around 06:00 and one of them near Targu Bujor, in Galati County, triggering a RO-Alert at 06:12 and the scrambling of two F-16s from Borcea with an IAR-330 SOCAT. That afternoon the drone was found in a walnut tree five metres from a house at Ciuslea. It carried no explosive charge, and neither ministry stated its origin.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 22 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Russian Shahed-138 crosses Moldovan airspace for seventeen minutes |
| 26 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Unidentified drone crosses Moldovan airspace at Palanca for five minutes |
| 26 Aug 2026 | Strike | Drone crash ignites forest fire near Plauru on the Danube Delta border |
| 27 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Five Russian drones cross Moldova hours before the Independence Day parade |
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.
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