Russian drones evade NATO air patrols over Romania
On the night of September 7 to 8, intruders were detected in Romanian airspace at 2:20 AM and 2:38 AM near the towns of Tulcea and Constanța. Here, we explain why they were not shot down.
According to Defense Express, a pair of F-16 aircraft from the 86th Air Base were scrambled, but the foreign objects that entered Romanian airspace managed to leave before the planes arrived.
It is a classic Russian tactic for drones or cruise missiles to attack targets in Ukraine by approaching from friendly countries. This forces Ukrainians to maintain air defense systems in those directions, which could otherwise be deployed in more critical regions like the Donetsk Oblast.
Mysterious Russian objects and problems with shooting them down
Most likely, the objects that entered Romanian airspace were drones from the Shahed family or possibly Kh-101 cruise missiles. Shooting down such objects by a military aircraft is simple, but in peacetime, it is restricted by numerous limitations.
As described by Wirtualna Polska journalist Łukasz Michalik, even if a plane sees the target on radar, it must identify it visually. On radar, it cannot be definitively determined if, for example, the suspected drone is not a helicopter. Additionally, near the border, it could also be a Ukrainian machine.
This requires flying close, and considering the presence of Russian objects in NATO airspace for just a few minutes, intercepting them in NATO airspace is virtually impossible. Furthermore, military aircraft during peacetime cannot exceed the speed of sound, which extends the time to reach the incident location.
It is also worth noting that shooting down such an object can be risky, because if shot down from a close distance, debris from the target can damage the aircraft and will eventually fall to the ground. In the best-case scenario, nothing happens, while in the worst case, they could cause a forest fire or fall on inhabited areas.
For this reason, what might seem like a weak response from both Romania and Poland to the intrusion of Russian drones is understandable. On the other hand, if a full-scale armed conflict were to occur, in the operational area, any flying object without an active transponder or lacking NATO friend-or-foe identification would be at risk of being shot down.
