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As part of the SAFE EU financial instrument Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament[1]. Currently still relying heavily on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard for anti-air as well as fighter jets with air-to-air missiles, as these recent drones were all brought down by F-16s.
Aside from strategic targets, a lot of the civilian infrastructure is quite vulnerable to drone attacks as there's a huge border to cover and definitely not enough anti-drone tech deployed. An apartment building was hit months ago with no casualties: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/apartment-building-hit-...
[1] https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/media/news-watch/news/2026/06...
> Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament
Some of this is going to be stalled - Romania was planning on deploying the Iron Dome [0] and Spyder [1] for AD which was going to be co-produced by Volkswagen in their German factories that were on the chopping block, but Qatar (Volkswagen's largest minority shareholder with 17% voting share) blocked that deal [2].
[0] - https://www.jpost.com/international/article-861770
[1] - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sy1n3pcfzx
[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-10/qatar-blo...
F-16s with human pilots and a2a missiles vs cheap drones? That’s one hell of an asymmetry and doesn’t seem robust enough to handle 100x the scale.
URL appears to go to home page of RO military, another URL is: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260726-romanian-jet-sho...
Nice to see a France24 link in the wild, it is a very underrated news outlet
The home page shows 3 consecutive press releases for the past 3 days each detailing a similar incident.
The first drone on 24.07 took ~80min to intercept and shoot down, well into the country. The other 2 were shot down within kilometers of the border so they’re paying closer attention.
It's not World War 3. It's just two increasingly overlapping unsolvable wars involving two increasingly coherent geopolitical blocs consisting of dozens of countries spanning three continents, most major nuclear powers holding 95% of global nuclear stockpiles and the vast majority of global military spending and resources, with nuclear-capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles flying back and forth, attacks on strategic nuclear early warning systems, threats of nuclear first-use and global nuclear holocaust, etc. Fighting over issues the leaders of the involved superpowers and great powers have described as existential and beyond compromise.
Not World War 3 though, currently.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/26/ukraine-war-br...
Are there enough nations on Russia's side to call them a bloc? It seems like almost everyone is supporting Ukraine.
russia's invasion of Ukraine is absolutely solvable. It's just a disgrace that Ukraine is left to do it alone, with huge casualties (civilian as well as military), and inconceivable destruction.
No, it's not that complicated - one country invaded another - that's it.
One is a nuclear power, so the reaction is not what it would be otherwise.
This is the same as Russia invading their neighbours like they have since Peter I.
Given how poor their Ukrainian war is going, this is a strange move. I guess it’s mostly just posturing?
The logic I’ve heard is that one of the more palatable defeat conditions for Russia is that they’d rather lose to NATO than Ukraine. So they’re fine to push limits because even the worst case scenario gives them better options.
It is ye olde reconnaisance by the tip of the bayonet. How long can you prod before someone says "ouch!"
For the case of a hot war, knowing the detection and destruction capabilities of your future enemy is valuable.
Having seen posts in social media by the usual suspects from previous such incidents, it's a way to convince the audience at home that the enemy (NATO) is actually weak and that there's no need to be alarmed.
It offers valuable information on response time.
These are cheap decoy foam drones with less electronics. The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
Putin's only option is to escalate at this point, otherwise he's seen as weak with the war going so well. The Romanians should also be really getting their act together and start shooting the bogeys down.
Turkey didn't think twice before shooting down a Russian Su-24 in 2015 for violating Turkish airspace for about 17 seconds. This is how you "negotiate" with the Russians: first you break their nose when cross some red line, then appologize.
They've been doing this for years.
I don't know if it's to try and circumvent Ukrainian defenses or to provoke a reaction to sell to domestic audiences though.
Deescalation by escalation is a standard russian tactic.
Move by whom? Drones straying from the intended route is usually caused by jamming from the other side.
Escalating tensions between Russia and NATO is in Ukraine's, not Russia's, interest.
I hope they don’t send any to Bulgaria. Our PM is waiting exactly this to declare we’re joining the Russian federation.
How are Russian drones entering Bulgarian territory going to give the PM the chance/excuse to join Russia?
> we’re joining the Russian federation.
Based PM, from one of your neighbors just North of the Danube.
Why are these drones so easy to shoot down, but the ones invading airspaces over nuclear bases and other sensitive installations hundreds of times for months all over Europe and the east coast of the US were never shot down or tracked even once?
Because Shahed 131/136 are large, way larger than surveillance drone/quadcopter.
We are talking 2-3m wingspans and 130-200kg launch mass.
Different types of drones.
These are Shaheds - big, slow, dumb, you can see the coming.
The one's over Europe were sneaky little FPV drones, like consumer grade ones, launched by FSB people nearby.
I guess because the have an explosive payload and it's better to take them down before they reach a populated area.
The other drones are probably not going to cause an explosion (unles they colide with a plane) and are already in a populated area, so it's risky to destroy them.
They are all just as easy to shoot down, if you're willing to spend half a million dollars doing it. When you're Romania that hasn't been fighting a war for years and you get one a day, it's trivial to shoot them down. When you get tens to hundreds a day and you're Ukraine, it's harder since you cannot afford to use F16s and sidewinders to shoot them down. And even if you do, you cannot shoot down all of them, but when you just get one a day, it'll be a while until the 95% interception rate gives you a miss.
Oh, wait, Romania actually got hit by one. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93x4nxlkjeo
It's just a matter of numbers, both percentages and money.
There are many more that are missed in Romania :)
Because those weren’t drones, they were people noticing for the first time that there are airplanes in the sky.
Because they were being flown by their respective governments.
We seems scarily only one rogue actor or screw up from
WW III in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Don't we already have that? It's just a smoulder instead of a conflagration.
People keep bringing WW3 up but I disagree. There's such a huge aversion in EU countries against any kind of war against Russia and the governments know it. They will let a LOT slide on Russia's side before any kind of retaliation (and I mean by force) is coming. Russia could probably kill several service members with a drone, claim it was an accident and the only thing coming from Europe would be a stern letter, some more sanctions and telling off the ambassador (and the Kremlin knows this too).
That is the point of these "one offs".
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
Hawe you been in coma? There has been a ww2 sized war in eastern europe for 4 years
The big part that I didn’t see was whether this was a Russian drone or Ukrainian drone
They're Shahed drones, used by Russia.
Drones shot down in Romania, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, etc.
These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Rumor is Polish GROM have been inside Russia for months.
Edit: See sources in my comment below. I bring receipts.
AIUI Russia has been regularly intruding into Finnish airspace and has often penetrated the land border with Georgia.
It’s one of those “let’s see how much we can get away with” probes to try to establish a new status quo. I wonder how Russia would respond to NATO drones doing the same.
Time to expell some more Russian embassy staff.
Because Russian's war with Ukraine is unsustainable, something has to change for Putin for him to remain in power, and one option is an escalation with NATO.
Some other scenarios also explained in this good video
“Dear Mr Putin, Please don’t use our airspace to attack Ukraine else we will be forced to write you another slightly more strongly worded letter next time. Thanks, NATO”
With the heatwaves and drought in Europe it's probably not the best time to have flaming wreckage falling from the sky.
What does this have to do with startups?
It's all a sham so that we, Romania, would be dragged into this war. That will only mean the end of the comprador regime currently ruling over us, but until then most probably many of us, Romanian men, will get killed "defending" the Western regime. Such is life, i.e. requiring sacrifices.