Romania’s F-16 exposes NATO command gap

On 19 May, a Romanian F-16 from the "Carpathian Vipers" detachment fired an air-to-air missile at a drone drifting through Estonian airspace. It was the first shootdown in the two-decade history of NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission (Digi24). The drone, Ukrainian-made and probably pushed off course by Russian electronic jamming, broke apart over Lake Võrtsjärv. Estonian defence minister Hanno Pevkur admitted that "risks always remain" in such engagements (ERR). The pilot was decorated three days later.

The following day, an unidentified object set off air raid sirens across Vilnius, grounded flights, and sent Lithuania’s president into a shelter. It was never identified or recovered. Hours later, Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzia told the Security Council that "NATO will not save" the Baltic states and named specific Latvian military bases as targets (fakti.bg). Two incidents, two threats, 48 hours, and still no common NATO protocol for any of them.

For Maltese readers, this is not a distant Baltic problem. Malta is outside NATO, but it sits inside the EU’s security debate and depends on a rules-based European order that small states need more than large ones do. The question raised by the Estonian shootdown is simple: when an object crosses a border, who has the authority to act before the danger has already moved on?

Five Countries, Five Improvisations

Drone incursions along NATO’s eastern flank have produced improvised and contradictory national responses. Romania has absorbed 14 unauthorised drone entries into its airspace since January, with radars unable to track objects flying below 50 metres (Hotnews). Lithuania raised alert sensitivity, but had spent only €2.48 million of a €25 million civil defence budget; shelters at Vilnius airport were locked (Lrytas).

Estonia went furthest. Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told NATO counterparts in Helsingborg on 22 May that Russia is "guiding these drones to NATO territory" (Ukrainska Pravda). He gave no new public evidence. Secretary General Mark Rutte, asked the same question by Lithuanian broadcaster LRT, said he had "no information" supporting the claim. The distance between what frontline capitals say and what NATO leadership is prepared to confirm shows how fragmented the response remains.

Poland rejected Germany’s European Sky Shield Initiative and is building its own anti-drone system, SAN: 18 batteries, over 700 vehicles, with first deliveries this year and partial funding through SAFE, an EU defence loan programme (Bankier). France, sending Rafale fighters to Lithuania, stayed quiet on Baltic demands while Admiral Vandier at NATO’s transformation command pushed Paris’s own "dronisation" doctrine (Le Monde).

The Authority Gap Before Ankara

On 21 May, the three Baltic presidents demanded that NATO turn its Baltic mission from Air Policing into a full Air Defence Mission (Aerotime). Air Policing is peacetime surveillance: each engagement needs political approval from a national capital. An Air Defence Mission would let pilots neutralise threats under pre-approved rules. The distinction decides who pulls the trigger. When the Romanian F-16 engaged the drone, command had to transfer from NATO to Romanian national authority before the pilot could fire. Under an Air Defence Mission, that authority would be delegated in advance to NATO commanders.

Rutte called the transition "the logical next step" at a summit of nine eastern-flank leaders in Bucharest on 13 May (NATO). The North Atlantic Council, NATO’s decision-making body where all 32 allies must agree, has issued no binding directive. A doctrine working group met in Helsinki in mid-May but announced no public outcome (Finnish MoD). A vetted pool of 18 counter-drone systems is being assembled (Defense News). Neither step settles who may shoot, or when.

The deadline is the Ankara Summit on 7-8 July. Moscow’s posture suggests it understands the pressure point. Nebenzia’s claim that Russian intelligence knows "the coordinates of decision-making centers in Latvia" (The News) went beyond standard deterrence language and into targeting language. Putin, at the same time, launched large-scale nuclear exercises.

Russia may be actively deflecting Ukrainian drones into NATO airspace, or it may simply be exploiting the confusion they cause. The effect is the same. Each unresolved incursion widens the gap between NATO’s collective defence guarantee and what actually happens when a drone crosses a border. The alliance has six weeks before Ankara to close it. The object over Vilnius, the one Lithuania’s crisis centre said could have been "a drone designed to deceive systems," was never found.