Why Romanian F‑16s didn’t shoot down Russian drones
During the night of 7 to 8 September, in Romanian airspace at 02:20 and 02:38 GMT near the towns of Tulcea and Constanța, intruders were detected but not shot down. Here’s why.
According to the portal Defense Express, a pair of F-16 aircraft from the 86th Air Base were scrambled. However, the foreign objects that entered Romanian airspace had left before the planes arrived on the scene.
The Russians commonly employ a tactic where drones or cruise missiles intended for Ukrainian targets approach from neighbouring countries. This strategy forces Ukrainians to maintain air defence systems in these directions, which could otherwise be deployed in more critical regions such as 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. While shooting down such objects by a military aircraft is straightforward, it is restricted by numerous limitations in peacetime.
Wirtualna Polska journalist Łukasz Michalik explains that even if a plane detects the target on radar, it must visually identify it. On radar, the suspected drone could be mistaken for a helicopter, for instance. Additionally, near the border, it might even be a Ukrainian machine.
This necessitates close flight, and given the presence of Russian objects in NATO airspace for a few minutes, intercepting them in NATO airspace is virtually impossible. Furthermore, during peacetime, military aircraft cannot exceed the speed of sound, which prolongs the time required to reach the incident location.
It is also worth noting that shooting down such an object carries risks. If shot down from a close distance, debris from the target could damage the aircraft and fall to the ground. In the best-case scenario, nothing happens, but in the worst case, it could cause a forest fire or fall on inhabited areas.
For these reasons, what might seem like a weak response from both Romania and Poland to the intrusion of Russian drones is understandable. On the other hand, if a full-scale armed conflict were to arise, any unauthorised flying object in the operational area without an active transponder or lacking NATO friend-or-foe identification would likely be shot down.
