Baltic leaders demand NATO shoot-down powers

A Russian military aircraft entered Finnish airspace near Porkkala on May 27, the latest in a pattern of violations that has nearly tripled in a single year. Finland's defense ministry attributed the incursion to thunderstorm avoidance. Three days earlier, a Romanian F-16 shot down a drone over Estonia, the first time a NATO fighter has destroyed an unmanned aircraft in Baltic skies. And the day before that, NATO foreign ministers left a meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, without a single operational decision on the crisis.

What "Air Defense" actually means

NATO has run Baltic Air Policing since 2004, a peacetime rotation where allied fighters identify and escort unknown aircraft near Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which have no fighter jets of their own. The current rotation includes French Rafales and Romanian F-16s at Šiauliai, Lithuania, and Portuguese F-16s at Ämari, Estonia.

On May 21, the three Baltic presidents jointly demanded an upgrade: replace policing with a full Air Defense Mission (Aerotime). Under the current setup, a pilot must visually confirm an unknown aircraft before acting. An Air Defense Mission would allow pre-defined threat envelopes where the military chain can authorize engagement without waiting for political sign-off each time. Small GPS-spoofed drones can transit and crash before a pilot completes the current identification protocol.

The urgency is measurable. Confirmed Russian airspace violations across NATO jumped from 6 in 2024 to 18 in 2025. In September 2025, three MiG-31 fighters flew 9-10 km into Estonian sovereign territory with transponders off, prompting Estonia to invoke Article 4 (NATO's formal consultation clause, one step below the collective defense trigger of Article 5) (NATO North Atlantic Council).

Who's steering the drones?

Helsingborg was supposed to prepare the ground for action at NATO's Ankara summit in July. Instead it exposed a split on a basic question: is Russia deliberately pushing Ukrainian drones into allied territory?

Secretary General Mark Rutte attributed incursions to "jamming" and "other disturbances," passive language suggesting accidental drift. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said the opposite: "Russia is directing these drones to NATO territory" (Euromaidan Press, Pravda.com.ua). EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking in Vilnius days later, called the incursions "a deliberate strategy from Russia". A Reuters analysis introduced a third reading: that Ukraine deliberately flies drones near the border as a shield, knowing Russia won't fire into NATO airspace (Reuters).

If NATO formally determines Russia is conducting electronic warfare to push munitions into allied territory, that raises Article 5 questions the alliance has not prepared to answer. US Secretary of State Rubio confirmed the meeting's limited ambition: "No concrete ask today... I don't think there's been any firm commitments or firm asks".

Frontline states aren't waiting

Where NATO hesitates, individual allies act. Latvia deployed mobile drone-intercept units to its Russian border (Defense News). Lithuania's president declared the country will shoot down drones "regardless of missile costs". The five Nordic nations signed a revised defense cooperation agreement on May 6, formalizing cross-border military movement and joint drone procurement for the first time since 2009 (NORDEFCO). Von der Leyen proposed a "unified drone alert system" for the Baltic states, though channeled through the EU rather than NATO.

NATO has not clarified whether the Romanian shoot-down marks a shift in rules of engagement or a one-off authorization. The next decision window is NATO's Ankara summit in July, where upgrading to an Air Defense Mission requires consensus from all 32 allies. No government has publicly opposed the upgrade. But the most significant friction may be structural: Germany's constitution requires cabinet approval before the military shoots down aircraft. That requirement makes it difficult for Berlin to accept standing pre-authorization rules that let commanders act in the moment, exactly the kind of rules an Air Defense Mission demands.