NATO flag is seen at the Presidential Palace during the President Karol Nawrocki inauguration in Warsaw, Poland on August 6, 2025. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images<\/p>\n
An F-18 fighter on a NATO<\/a> air policing mission shot down a drone that illegally breached Romanian<\/a> national airspace, the fourth unmanned aircraft shot down over the country this year, Romania’s defense ministry said on Sunday.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for NATO’s military headquarters, U.S. Army Colonel Martin O’Donnell, said the alliance is constantly on watch and prepared to defend itself from any threat.<\/p>\n “Additional details regarding Sunday’s incident remain under investigation, but the drone appears to be Russian,” he said.<\/p>\n NATO member Romania shares a 614 km (381 miles) land border with Ukraine and has reported\u00a0repeated breaches\u00a0of its airspace by Russian drones over the past four years, as well as mines floating in the Black Sea across key trade and energy routes.<\/p>\n Romania’s defense ministry did not specify the origin of the drone, saying it was detected by radar as it entered the country from neighboring Moldova, 24 km north of the southeastern Romanian city of Galati.<\/p>\n The F-18 jet, part of a Spanish NATO contingent deployed in Romania, “made radar contact with the target and received permission to engage”, the ministry said in a statement, adding that the drone was shot down safely at 5:01 a.m. (0201 GMT).<\/p>\n The ministry said that fragments from the destroyed drone appeared to have fallen in an uninhabited area between two villages.<\/p>\n In July, Romanian F-16 fighter jet pilots\u00a0shot down\u00a0three Russian drones breaching national airspace for the first time after dozens of such incursions since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n In May, a Russian drone\u00a0crashed\u00a0into an apartment block in Galati during an overnight attack on neighboring Ukraine, injuring two people.<\/p>\n