| Date | 18 Oct 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Strike |
| Location |
Liepna Parish, Alūksne Municipality, Latvia
57.33, 27.53 (approximate) |
Latvia's National Armed Forces said they received reports of an explosion-like noise in Liepna parish, Alūksne municipality, near the Russian border, on 18 October 2026, and that airspace surveillance data showed the possible movement of an unidentified object in Latvian airspace. A search with the State Police was called off after two days without result. On 24 October, after a resident's report, police found drone wreckage in a hard-to-reach forest area; the armed forces described it as a foreign unmanned aircraft, and one of their explosive ordnance disposal units removed it. Nobody was hurt. The police opened a criminal case, and the armed forces opened an internal review of their response. No authority stated the drone's origin.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Oct 2026 | Incursion | Russian drone crosses south-eastern Moldova over Purcari for eight minutes |
| 16 Oct 2026 | Strike | Drone crashes and explodes near Codrenii Noi after four overnight crossings of Moldova |
| 17 Oct 2026 | Interception | Two jet-powered Geran drones shot down by Romanian F-16s over territorial waters off Sulina |
| 18 Oct 2026 | Strike | Drone, most likely Ukrainian, strays into northern Lithuania and explodes near Juodžionys |
Moldova's defense ministry counted 19 airspace violations in October, and GlobalMilitary.net's incident log, which records only established incursions, holds 31 Moldovan entries for 2026 against Romania's 32, most of them since August.
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.