An F-18 fighter jet on a NATO air policing mission along the eastern flank shot down a drone that breached Romanian airspace on Sunday, Romania’s defense ministry said.
The Ministry of National Defense said in an Aug. 16 statement that at 4:44 a.m., military surveillance systems detected entrance of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) coming from Moldova—a landlocked country between Romania and Ukraine—approximately 15 miles north of the southeastern Romanian city of Galati.
The statement said an F-18 belonging to the Spanish Air and Space Forces on a monitoring mission at the 57th Air Base Mihail Kogalniceanu had made radar contact with the craft and received approval to engage, shooting down the drone at 5:01 a.m….