NATO has shot down what is thought to be a Russian drone over Romanian airspace for the first time after F-16 and Eurofighters were deployed to intercept the rogue aircraft.
The Romanian military tracked a drone crossing over from Ukrainian airspace into NATO skies on Thursday morning before taking it out over a rural area. The President of Romania Nicușor Dan said the drone was shot down at 1100 local time (0900 London, 0400 New York) and emphasised “The area was uninhabited, so the pilot was able to fire without any risk involved”.
Two Italian Eurofighter Typhoons, two Romanian F-16s, and a Romanian Puma helicopter were deployed to intercept. The drone was first detected by radar at 0939 on Friday morning and was joined by the Italian jets from the moment it entered NATO airspace.
The Romanian F-16s were scrambled to join the chase and one of them got the kill with an air-to-air missile. Claims that an unsuccessful attempt was also made by the Italian NATO air police aircraft to shoot down the drone were noted by Romanian newspaper Adevarul.
The drone was taken down in Buzau County in the east of the country and the first remains of the aircraft have been recovered by investigators who are seeking wreckage to determine where it came from and what it was carrying.
The Romanian government has stopped short of saying whether they believe the drone was definitely Russian, but the intercepting pilots are reported to have stated it was a “Shahed or Geran-2 type threat”. While the Iranian-designed Shahed drone is daily employed by by Russian forces in great numbers, it is also widely copied, including by Western nations.
The Deputy Commander of the Romanian Joint Forces Command, Gheorghe Maxim spoke at a press conference about the interception on Friday afternoon and said: “The air target referred to was detected from outside the national territory and tracked along its entire trajectory by the radars in combat service of the Air Police… When it was declared a hostile air target, the Air Operations Center was in constant contact with the NATO Combined Air Operations Center in Torrejón.
“The decision to engage involves several actions, among which it is absolutely necessary to visually identify the target at the appropriate time, then frame it with the on-board radar and engage only in areas where there is no danger to the population and to objectives on the national territory. For us, the safety of the population and the safety of infrastructure elements are more important than the moment we shoot down a target.”
The Romanian military also used the press conference to deny rumours the drone, which changed its course several times in a zif-zag pattern in Romanian airspace, had overflown a nuclear power plant and was heading to a military base when it was brought down.
As noted by Romania’s minister of foreign affairs Toiu Oana, Friday’s incident is the first time the country has shot down a presumed hostile drone over its airspace, despite drones and missiles drifting into NATO airspace from the next-door Ukraine War having become a frequent occurrence in the past four years. In April, NATO jets shot down a drone from the Ukraine war in Estonian airspace — this time thought to have been launched by Ukraine against Russia — and in May a Russian drone wasn’t shot down over Romania and slammed into an apartment block, injuring two.
Last month, there was high drama on Romania’s coast after a series of lost Ukrainian sea attack drones — which carry enormous explosive payloads for sinking Russian warships — ended up in Romanian waters. Four boats self-destructed, including one inside the port of Constanta.