Four fighter jets, two Spanish and two Romanian, were activated by Romania after detecting that a drone had entered the Balkan country's airspace near the border with Ukraine, Romanian media reported on Friday.
The Romanian Defense Ministry said that an unidentified object violated Romanian airspace on Thursday night, according to the Transtelex.ro portal.
It was detected 150 kilometers from the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, in the southeast of the country, next to the Black Sea, entering a maximum depth of 14 kilometers into national territory.
In response, two F-18 aircraft from the Spanish Air Force at Air Base 57 in Mihail Kogalniceanu and two F-16s from the Romanian Air Force at Air Base 86 in Borcea took off to monitor the area.
Both bases are located near the border with Ukraine.
The planes did not have visual contact with the target at any point along their trajectory, while the surveillance system lost the radar signal about 20 minutes after the alert.
The four fighters remained in the region for 50 minutes before returning to their respective bases.
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several Russian drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) launched in attacks on Ukrainian targets have entered Romanian airspace.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Friday, at the Alliance's Defence Ministers' meeting in Brussels, that the main threat to NATO remains Russia and that air and missile defence remains a priority.
"This is all the more important given Russia's war against Ukraine, which has led to multiple violations of NATO airspace," the latest of which was in Romania, he stressed.
Eight Spanish Army F-18 Hornet fighters are in Romania as part of NATO's Enhanced Air Surveillance (eAP) mission.
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