According to an incident dashboard maintained by the Ministry of National Defense of Romania (MApN) current as of August 25, 2026, Romania recorded 25 unauthorized drone incursions into its national airspace or territorial waters during 2026. This figure represents nearly triple the nine unauthorized drone incursions recorded across the whole of 2025.
The same defense ministry dashboard counted 47 situations in 2026 in which aircraft on air policing duty were launched to monitor the air situation, compared with 21 across 2025. The Ministry of National Defense defined each figure as a count of specific situations rather than counting individual aircraft or flight sorties.
The report detailed two fighter scramble operations taking place on August 24, 2026. Around 06:00 local time, radar detected intermittent signals over Moldovan airspace near Cahul, leading to the launch of two Romanian Air Force F-16 fighters and an IAR-330 SOCAT helicopter. A RO-Alert emergency cell broadcast message was sent to the population. Drone components carrying no explosive charge were later identified on a property at Ciuslea in Vrancea County, having crossed into national airspace from the direction of Moldova.
Later that evening at 22:37 on August 24, 2026, radar detected two air targets 25 kilometers northwest of Snake Island moving toward the Romanian border. Two Spanish Air and Space Force F/A-18 Hornet fighters deployed from the 57th Air Base at Mihail Kogalniceanu to monitor the situation, while a RO-Alert message was dispatched to northern Tulcea County. The contacts left radar at 22:58 with explosions reported on the Ukrainian side and no penetration of Romanian airspace detected.
The statistics follow earlier defense responses in the region. Romanian F-16 pilots previously downed three drones between July 24 and July 26, 2026, and on August 20, 2026, an F-16 opened fire with its cannon on a maritime drone inside Romania’s exclusive economic zone. Historical records show that the maritime drone was safely destroyed near the Neptun Alpha platform after fighters received authorization to fire.
