Romania announced Thursday that an F-16 fighter jet destroyed an armed naval drone just hundreds of meters from a gas project in the Black Sea. According to Romania’s defense minister, the vessel—loaded with explosives—did not come from neighboring Ukraine. The Romanian Navy also examined debris from another drone found off the coast of Constanța.
The maritime incident joins a series of serious security and aerial incidents along NATO’s eastern flank. Among them, a Spanish F-18 on a NATO mission intercepted a drone that had penetrated Romanian airspace from the direction of Moldova. Beyond that, NATO reported that Italian fighter jets intercepted a drone that entered Latvian airspace, amid repeated incursions that Poland and the Baltic states are also dealing with.
Romania, with a population of about 19 million, has become one of the countries most exposed to the fallout from the fighting in Ukraine. Its eastern coasts overlooking the Black Sea and the Danube River are very close to combat zones and Ukrainian targets that Russia attacks frequently.