Nato jets were scrambled to track two Russian drones that crossed into Romania on Tuesday in the deepest and first daytime incursion into the country’s airspace since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
German Typhoon and Romanian F-16 fighter jets took off in pairs to follow the uncrewed aircraft. The first flew back into Ukrainian airspace, but the second was later found downed in Puieşti, about 70 miles from Ukraine.
Ionuț Moşteanu, Romania’s defence minister, said two of the German pilots had been given orders to shoot down the second drone. In the end, he said it appeared to have crashed, possibly because it had run out fuel.
Examination of the wreckage showed the drone was unarmed, the minister added. “It could have been destroyed if all the conditions had been met ... the pilots needed to see it, to engage it, to lock it on radar and to be able to fire a missile at it.”
The first drone was detected at 6.28am local time (0428 GMT) and the second at 7.50am, the defence ministry said. People in three Romanian border counties were told to take cover in the morning until the incident was resolved.
It is the 13th time Romanian airspace has been breached by Russian drones, the third incident in the past week and the first during daytime. Villagers on the Romanian side of the border with Ukraine were evacuated last week when a tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas was struck and caught fire in the nearby Ukrainian port of Izmail across the Danube.
Six drones also crossed into Moldova’s airspace overnight, according to the country’s defence ministry. One of them, a distinctive delta-wing model with a Russian Z symbol spray painted on the tailfin, landed on a roof in the village of Cuhureştii de Jos, 15 miles from the Ukrainian border.
After an inspection, the country’s police said the drone was an unarmed Gerbera decoy, used by the Russians to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences and increasingly in incursions into the airspace of neighbouring countries. They suggested the drone had landed when it ran out of fuel.
In September, 21 unarmed Gerbera drones crossed into Poland in an apparently deliberate incursion by Russia. The incident led Nato to create the Eastern Sentry mission, with increased fighter jet patrols of countries on the alliance’s eastern flank.
However, using fighter jets to shoot down drones is an expensive way to deal with the threat – and not always practical because of the dangers of bringing down a Russian or unknown craft above a populated area.
Gen Christopher Donahue, the commander of the US army in Europe and Africa, said on a visit to Romania’s Mihail Kogǎlniceanu airbase that a new capability to shoot down drones would be deployed to the country.
“We have tested and it is in the final stages of being employed. Romanian soldiers and other alliance soldiers have been trained on this capability and I know you’re going to see this capability in the delta [of the Danube] very soon,” he said.
