The pilot of a Spanish F-18 fighter jet, who was participating in a NATO aerial surveillance mission, shot down an unmanned aircraft that had illegally violated Romania’s national airspace, the country’s Ministry of Defense announced today, Sunday (August 16). This is the fourth unmanned aircraft that Romania has shot down this year.
The NATO member country shares a 614-kilometer (382 miles) with Ukraine and, over the past four years, has recorded repeated violations of its airspace by Russian drones, as well as mines drifting into the Black Sea, near major trade and energy routes.
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The ministry did not specify the drone’s origin, noting that its radars detected it entering the country from neighboring Moldova, about 24 kilometers (15 miles) north of the southeastern Romanian city of Galați.
The F-18 “detected the target via radar and received authorization to engage it,” the ministry said in a statement. “The drone was safely shot down at 5:01 a.m.”
The ministry said the wreckage appeared to have fallen in an uninhabited area between two villages.
In July, Romanian F-16 fighter pilots shot down three Russian drones that violated national airspace, for the first time following dozens of similar violations during the more than four years of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier this year, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in the city of Galatsi during a nighttime attack on neighboring Ukraine, injuring two people.
Source: cnn.gr
