Romania reports sharp rise in drone airspace incursions in 2026

Romania's Ministry of National Defense has logged 25 unauthorized drone incursions into national airspace or territorial waters so far in 2026, up sharply from nine for all of 2025. The figures come from an incident dashboard the ministry maintains, current as of August 25, 2026.

The same tracker shows 47 situations this year in which aircraft on air policing duty were scrambled to monitor airspace, compared with 21 across the whole of 2025. The ministry noted that each figure counts distinct situations, not individual aircraft or sorties.

On August 24, radar picked up intermittent signals over Moldovan airspace near Cahul early in the morning. One signal later appeared over Targu Bujor in Galati County. Two Romanian F-16 fighters and an IAR-330 SOCAT helicopter were sent up in response, and a public alert went out through the RO-Alert system. The alert was lifted just before 9 a.m. once the F-16s had returned to base at Borcea, although an initial helicopter search turned up no debris.

Drone components turned up later in a yard in neighboring Vrancea County. Checks found the drone carried no explosive charge, and officials said the parts likely belonged to the aircraft that had crossed into Romanian airspace that morning from the direction of Moldova.

That same night, radar detected two targets moving toward the Romanian border near Snake Island. Two Spanish Air and Space Force F/A-18 fighters, based at Mihail Kogalniceanu, were scrambled to assess the situation, and a separate alert was issued to residents in northern Tulcea County.