Italian Fighter Jets Shoot Down Unidentified Drone in Lithuania

Italian Typhoon fighter jets shot down an unidentified drone that entered Lithuanian airspace.

The Ministry of National Defence of the Republic of Lithuania reported the incident.

Around midnight, an object moving toward the country was detected in the Lithuanian airspace.

At around 00:20, the identified drone was shot down by Italian fighter jets that took off from Šiauliai Air Base.

After the drone was destroyed, its wreckage was found at the site. Military personnel and Lithuanian police officers are currently working at the scene.

Head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre Vilmantas Vitkauskas said that law enforcement and military police are operating under heightened intensity.

Experts are expected to collect the debris and determine what exactly the downed object was and what purpose it served. According to him, it is currently unknown whether the drone was a combat UAV with explosives. The wreckage found so far does not allow its type to be conclusively identified.

Lithuania has encountered unidentified drones before.

On the night of September 1, 2026, Latvia issued two air raid alerts due to a UAV. Firstly over Ludza Municipality at around 2:00 a.m. where the alert was lifted at 2:25 a.m. Later, at around 4:00 a.m., an alert was issued over Alūksne Municipality, after which NATO fighter jets were scrambled. The drones were not shot down during either of these incidents.

However, on the night of August 14, 2026, NATO fighter jets taking part in the Baltic Air Policing mission shot down a drone over Balvi Municipality in northeastern Latvia after it violated the country’s airspace.

The alert was issued across several municipalities, including Augšdaugava, Preiļi, Rēzekne, Balvi, and Alūksne.

The Latvian National Armed Forces reported that the drone entered the country’s airspace as a result of interference from Russian electronic warfare systems.

On August 17, the Minister of Defence clarified that the UAV entered from the Belarusian side. On August 20, it was reported that the drone was of Ukrainian origin and had likely gone off course due to signal jamming.

Similar incidents have also occurred in Estonia.

Militarnyi previously reported that the unidentified object which violated the country’s airspace from Belarus on September 13 was heading toward Kaliningrad.

Lithuanian Air Force radars have limited capabilities to accurately identify the type of aircraft, detecting only its speed, altitude, and flight path.

The object flew 60–70 km through Lithuanian airspace before heading toward Russia’s Kaliningrad region.