The Romanian Armed Forced destroyed a maritime drone around noon on Thursday in the area of the Neptun Deep gas extraction platform in the Black Sea, Minister of National Defence Radu Miru?a said on his official Facebook profile.
“Through the recently established direct communication channel with the Ukrainian side, we received official confirmation that the drone was not of Ukrainian origin,” the Minister specified.
The Neptun Deep offshore production platform was installed in July 2026 as part of Romania's largest natural gas project.
On Thursday morning, the Coast Guard informed the Ministry of the presence of a maritime drone several hundred metres from the site of gas extraction operations at the Neptun Deep platform within Romania’s exclusive economic zone and 128 km east of Constan?a.
A command centre was established at the Ministry of National Defence, which requested authorization from NATO for the Romanian Armed Forces to take command of the operation. Following an assessment and in coordination with the President of Romania, a decision was made to destroy the drone in order to protect the lives of the people working on the platform and to ensure the security of critical infrastructure.
To ensure a rapid response to the alert, two Romanian F-16 fighter jets were dispatched to neutralize the target. The drone, which was carrying explosives, was successfully destroyed using a fighter jet's onboard cannon.
Earlier on Thursday, the Romanian Ministry of National Defence reported that two fighter jets and a helicopter had been dispatched in response to another drone. The aircraft entered Romanian airspace about 13 kilometres east of the city of Gala?i and crashed at 3:24 a.m. local (and Bulgarian) time approximately 4 kilometres northeast of the village of Grindu, Tulcea County, in an uninhabited area.
At 2:23 a.m., the radar surveillance system of the Ministry detected a group of aerial targets near the border with Ukraine. Two F-18 fighter jets from the Spanish Air and Space Force and an IAR-330 SOCAT helicopter were dispatched to monitor the situation.
At 3:24 a.m., the crew of the IAR-330 SOCAT helicopter reported that the target had crashed. After the drone struck the ground, a fire broke out, which extinguished itself. No casualties or property damage have been reported.
A military team was dispatched to the crash site to cordon off the area. The air raid alert was lifted at 3:52 a.m. Residents of Tulcea received a warning message via the RO-ALERT system.
(BTA, August 20, 2026)
