Russian drones evade Romanian F‑16 response in late-night incursion
An unusual event occurred during the night of September 7 to 8, between 2:20 AM and 2:38 AM in Romanian airspace near the towns of Tulcea and Constanța. We explain why the intruders were not shot down.
According to a report by the Defense Express portal, a pair of F-16 aircraft from the 86th Air Base were scrambled. However, 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 keep air defense systems in these areas, 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. Although it is straightforward for a military aircraft to shoot down such objects, peacetime restrictions impose numerous limitations.
As described by Wirtualna Polska journalist Łukasz Michalik, even if a plane sees the target on radar, it must also identify it visually. On radar alone, 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 necessitates flying close, and considering the short presence of Russian objects in NATO airspace, intercepting them in such a brief window is virtually impossible. Furthermore, military aircraft during peacetime cannot exceed the speed of sound, which delays their arrival at the incident location.
It is also worth noting that shooting down such an object can be dangerous. If shot down from a close distance, debris from the target can damage the aircraft and eventually fall to the ground. In the best-case scenario, nothing happens, but in the worst case, the debris could cause a forest fire or fall on inhabited areas.
Therefore, what might seem like a weak response from both Romania and Poland to the intrusion of Russian drones is understandable. In contrast, during a full-scale armed conflict, any flying object in the operational area without an active transponder or lacking NATO friend-or-foe identification would be at significant risk of being shot down.
