BRUSSELS—NATO is stepping up its air defense efforts on its Eastern Flank, top alliance officials said Oct. 18, just one day after allied warplanes scrambled in response to an incursion into Romania’s airspace.
“Allies agreed that air and missile defense remains an alliance priority,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told alliance defense ministers at NATO’s glass-enclosed headquarters. “This is all the more important given Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has resulted in multiple NATO airspace violations, including just yesterday in Romania.”
Fighter aircraft from multiple NATO countries were scrambled after what was likely a drone breached Romania’s airspace, an allied official told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
“This is all part and parcel of our enhanced vigilance,” the official said.
There was another airspace incursion on Oct. 19. Two Spanish F-18s and two Romanian F-16s were scrambled.
The airspace violations represent a continual challenge for the alliance as missile fragments and other projectiles have landed in alliance territory and cut through its airspace as Russia wages a full-scale war just to NATO’s east.
NATO Allied Air Command, led by U.S. Air Force Gen. James B. Hecker, has stepped up the alliance’s air policing efforts since 2022, the year Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. has also deployed fighters on NATO’s eastern flank and conducted exercises with allied forces aimed at more realistically confronting a Russian aerial threat.
Recently, NATO began conducting additional flights of its E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to better surveil the Romanian airspace against Russian threats. The E-3s, one of the few platforms NATO owns as an alliance, began their increased presence Sept. 29, NATO said.
The “reinforcement of NATO air surveillance” in Romania came at the direction of U.S. Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who also heads U.S. European Command, to “monitor Russian military” activity, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin said.
The flights “strengthened Romania’s ability to respond to the increased air activity in the vicinity of its border,” NATO said in a release.
The E-3s are operating over alliance territory out of Preveza air base in Greece and NATO’s air base in Geilenkirchen, Germany, where the E-3s are headquartered.
“We’re forging NATO’s most robust defense plans since the end of the Cold War, and that will help ensure that we have the forces and capabilities to any contingency—that includes air and missile defense, which are crucial for defending the allied airspace,” Austin told reporters at the conclusion of the summit before departing to Italy for a meeting of the Group of 7’s ministers of defense.