Romanian F-16 Shot Down Drone Over Romanian Territory for the First Time

An F-16 fighter jet of the Romanian Air Force shot down a drone that had violated the country’s airspace using a missile for the first time.

This was reported by the country’s president, Nicușor Dan, on social media platform X.

According to him, the interception took place around 11:00 a.m. over an uninhabited area, which allowed the pilot to use his weapons without putting the civilian population at risk.

“Currently, teams of specialists from the relevant agencies are surveying the area to determine all the circumstances of the incident,” Nicușor Dan said.

The Romanian Ministry of National Defence clarified that the drone was detected at 09:39, approximately 20 km east of the city of Sulina, located in the Danube Delta.

The UAV then entered the country’s airspace and followed a route from Sulina to Brăila to Fetești to Buzău.

To intercept the target, two Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets from the Italian Air Force—which are conducting a NATO air patrol mission from the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base—were scrambled, along with two Romanian F-16s from the 86th Air Base in Fetești.

At 11:02 a.m., one of the Romanian Air Force’s F-16s struck the drone with an air-to-air missile. The target was shot down over uninhabited terrain near the village of Padina in Buzău County.

This is the first known instance in which a Romanian F-16 fighter jet has used weapons to destroy a drone that violated its airspace.

Previously, Romanian fighter jets had only escorted a Russian drone near the border with Ukraine until it disappeared from radar.

On the night of May 29, during a Russian attack on the Odesa region, a Russian Geran-2 drone crashed into a 10-story residential building in the Romanian city of Galați. Two people were hospitalized, and 70 were evacuated.