Incident is latest in series of events spilling over from fighting in Ukraine
By Sune Engel Rasmussen
NATO scrambled four jet fighters to shoot down a foreign drone that entered Latvian airspace early Friday, amid concerns that Russia's war in Ukraine is increasingly breaching the military alliance's eastern frontier.
Latvia's ministry of defense didn't immediately identify the drone's origin, but said it had entered its airspace "as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare." A senior Latvian official said the drone hadn't been found, and that the country wouldn't rush to conclude where it came from.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the drone was shot down by an Italian Eurofighter jet. Another Italian and two Turkish jet fighters were scrambled in response to the incursion. An investigation into the incident is under way, a NATO spokesman said.
Russia has deployed spoofing and jamming networks across its western military district to disrupt Ukrainian long-range strike drones, leading to numerous incidents in recent months of Ukrainian drones inadvertently crossing into the airspace of neighboring NATO states.
Such incursions have become a near-weekly occurrence this summer, and add to anxiety among NATO members about the potential for Russia to test the alliance's resolve with direct or indirect aerial intrusions.
At the same time , Baltic officials worry that Russia may use captured Ukrainian drones to stage a false-flag attack, prompting them to enhance security around national infrastructure such as power plants and natural-gas facilities.
Western military officials also warn that Russia is systematically using its own drones to probe Europe's air defenses. Germany's top military officer, Gen. Carsten Breuer, recently told The Wall Street Journal that Russia was waging an intensifying gray-zone campaign aimed at destabilizing the continent's governments and institutions.
U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia likely sent an explosive-laden drone discovered near a Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport in eastern Germany earlier this month. Germany's interior minister said the incident represented "a new level of danger."
Russian electronic warfare disrupts the satellite navigation systems in Ukrainian drones, forcing them to drift with prevailing winds or default flight paths, rather than toward their intended targets inside Russia.
Having to contend with stray Ukrainian drones, in addition to hybrid threats from Moscow, is testing NATO's resilience and its coffers. Scrambling jets or launching missiles is an expensive way to deal with comparatively cheap mass-produced drones.
NATO jets on Thursday pursued drones that had entered Romanian airspace near the Ukrainian border, the alliance said, without specifying the origin of the unmanned vehicles.
Ukrainian drones have previously crashed in all three Baltic states, which share borders with Russia, with officials blaming the incidents on Russian electronic warfare. Officials in those countries have repeatedly asked residents in border areas to take shelter amid fear of incursions.
A Romanian jet fighter in May shot down a drone over Estonia. A drone flying toward the Lithuanian capital Vilnius the following day prompted air-raid alerts in the city. Estonia in March confirmed that a Ukrainian drone had struck a power station in the eastern part of the country, close to the Russian port of Ust-Luga, which Ukraine was attacking at the time.
Also in March, Ukraine apologized to Finland for two stray drones that crashed in the southeastern part of the Nordic country, saying the incident was likely due to electronic signal interference by Russia.
Adding to tensions, Russia has been testing NATO air defenses to find weaknesses, using drones and missiles that could be perceived as stray.
NATO first shot down Russian drones over a member state in September last year, when Poland said its airspace had been breached 19 times in one night, leading authorities to close major airports and declare the country closer to open conflict than at any point since World War II.
A Russian cruise missile in July crashed in eastern Poland. The missile was likely targeting Ukraine, roughly 60 miles away.
The Journal has reported that U.S. intelligence assessments say Russian President Vladimir Putin could seek to test NATO's resolve with a limited attack on one of its members in the coming years.