Over three consecutive days this month, Romanian F-16s shot down three drones that had entered the country’s airspace — the first such engagements over Romanian territory. One appears to have been an Iranian-designed Shahed of the kind Russia uses against Ukraine. Bucharest summoned Moscow’s ambassador and acted under NATO’s air-policing command.
The episode answered the question Americans rightly ask of every ally: Will it act when the threat arrives? Romania did, using Romanian pilots and aircraft, without requiring a new American deployment. In May, a Romanian F-16 flying NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission had already destroyed a stray drone over Estonia.
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