An unmanned aerial vehicle that violated Romanian airspace early this Sunday, August 16, has been neutralized by Spanish aviation.
One of the two F-18 fighters belonging to the detachment that Spain has deployed in Romania under the umbrella of NATO carried out the downing of the aircraft, which had entered the Balkan country after crossing the border from neighboring Moldova. The operation, which was completed successfully and without any personal injuries, demonstrates the effectiveness of the Allied anti-aircraft defense and underlines the constant tension that the border region is experiencing due to the war conflict in Ukraine.
According to official information provided by the Romanian Ministry of Defense, the device was located by radar systems at 04:44 local time (01:44 GMT) when it entered national airspace about 24 kilometers north of the city of Galati, in the southeast of the country. After the route was monitored, the interception protocols were activated.
Two Spanish F-18 fighters, which had already taken off preventively from the Kogalniceanu military base on a routine surveillance mission, received direct authorization to open fire. At 05:01 a.m., just seventeen minutes after its detection, the drone was shot down over a completely unpopulated area located between the towns of Baleni and Cudalbi, in Galati county.
Congratulations to the pilots and a message of firmness from the Alliance
The Minister of Defense of Romania, Radu Miruta, has celebrated the precision of the joint maneuver, expressly congratulating both the Spanish pilots who carried out the shootdown and the personnel of the Romanian command center in charge of ground coordination. Through his social networks, Miruta highlighted that the operation demonstrates the strong commitment of the Atlantic Alliance: “Vigilance, rapid reaction and allied solidarity: these are the concrete guarantees of our security.”
In subsequent statements to the Antena 3 network, the head of Defense explained that the unmanned device had initially entered the airspace of Moldova from Ukraine, before finally entering Romania, where it remained flying for approximately a quarter of an hour.
This incident is framed in a context of maximum military alert for Romania, a member state of NATO and the European Union that shares more than 600 kilometers of border with Ukraine. Since the start of the large-scale invasion orchestrated by Russia in February 2022, more than thirty drones (the vast majority of Russian origin) have violated the sovereignty of Romanian airspace.
The one shot down this Sunday by Spanish aviation is the fourth aircraft destroyed in national territory since the end of July. The consequences of these incursions have already left direct consequences on the civilian population in the recent past; On May 29, a Russian-made Geran-2 model drone crashed into a residential building in the city of Galati itself, causing a strong explosion and a fire on the tenth floor that left two people injured.
