Baltics press NATO for shoot-down powers

The latest warning came from Finland, where a Russian military aircraft entered Finnish airspace near Porkkala on May 27. Helsinki's defence ministry said the aircraft had been avoiding thunderstorms. In ordinary times, that might have been the end of it. These are not ordinary times: Russian violations of NATO airspace have nearly tripled in a single year.

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. The day before that, NATO foreign ministers left a meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, without a single operational decision on what to do next.

What "Air Defence" actually means

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

On May 21, the three Baltic presidents asked NATO to move beyond policing and create a full Air Defence Mission (Aerotime). The distinction matters. Under the present system, a pilot must visually confirm an unknown aircraft before taking action. An Air Defence Mission would set pre-defined threat zones, allowing the military chain of command to authorise engagement without waiting for political approval each time.

That is the practical problem now facing NATO. Small drones, especially those affected by GPS spoofing, can cross airspace and crash before a pilot has worked through the current identification protocol. What looks like a legal distinction in Brussels or Mons becomes a matter of minutes over Estonia.

The pressure is visible in the figures. Confirmed Russian airspace violations across NATO rose from 6 in 2024 to 18 in 2025. In September 2025, three MiG-31 fighters flew 9-10 km into Estonian sovereign territory with their transponders switched off. Estonia invoked Article 4, NATO's formal consultation clause, which sits one step below Article 5, the alliance's collective defence trigger (NATO North Atlantic Council).

Who's steering the drones?

The Helsingborg meeting was meant to prepare the ground for decisions at NATO's Ankara summit in July. Instead, it exposed a split over the most basic question: are Ukrainian drones drifting into allied territory by accident, or is Russia pushing them there?

NATO secretary general Mark Rutte spoke of "jamming" and "other disturbances", language that points towards accidental drift. Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna gave a much harder reading: "Russia is directing these drones to NATO territory" (Euromaidan Press, Pravda.com.ua). Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, was in Vilnius days later and described the incursions as "a deliberate strategy from Russia".

A Reuters analysis offered a third possibility: that Ukraine is deliberately flying drones near the border as a shield, calculating that Russia will not fire into NATO airspace (Reuters).

For NATO, the distinction is not academic. If the alliance formally decides that Russia is using electronic warfare to push munitions into allied territory, Article 5 questions follow quickly. Those are questions NATO has not prepared to answer. US secretary of state Rubio made clear how limited the Helsingborg meeting had been: "No concrete ask today... I don't think there's been any firm commitments or firm asks".

Frontline states aren't waiting

The eastern flank is already moving faster than NATO as a whole. Latvia has deployed mobile drone-intercept units to its Russian border (Defense News). Lithuania's president has said the country will shoot down drones "regardless of missile costs". The five Nordic nations signed a revised defence cooperation agreement on May 6, putting cross-border military movement and joint drone procurement into formal terms for the first time since 2009 (NORDEFCO).

Von der Leyen has proposed a "unified drone alert system" for the Baltic states, routed through the EU rather than NATO. That matters for countries such as Ireland, outside NATO but inside the EU, where defence cooperation is always read through the politics of military neutrality.

NATO has still not said whether the Romanian shoot-down signals a change in the rules of engagement or a one-off authorisation. The next opening comes at the Ankara summit in July. Upgrading Baltic Air Policing to an Air Defence Mission would need consensus from all 32 allies.

No government has publicly opposed the move. The real blockage may be structural. Germany's constitution requires cabinet approval before the military shoots down aircraft. That makes it hard for Berlin to accept standing pre-authorisation rules that allow commanders to act in the moment. Yet those are precisely the rules an Air Defence Mission would need.