Romanian counter-drone systems failed acceptance tests. Rheinmetall was to hand over two of the four in April; a ministry document cites technical faults

Two of the four air-defence systems that Romania sent to Germany's Rheinmetall to be converted for fighting drones failed the defence ministry's acceptance tests. This follows from a ministry document that the news portal G4Media viewed and quoted from. They were due to be handed over on 15 April, and they are still not finished, more than five months past the deadline. G4Media ↗

According to that document, some subsystems "did not fully meet the requirements of the technical specification". According to the same source, Rheinmetall cited technical faults and supply-chain problems, took responsibility for replacing components, and penalties keep accruing against it until an acceptance protocol is signed without reservations. Adevărul ↗

The delay hits a country whose airspace Russian drones violate ever more often. The Romanian defence ministry gave America's ABC News an overview according to which Russian drones violated Romanian airspace at least twenty-three times in 2026 up to 17 August — that is, more times than in the entire period from 2022 to the end of 2025, when there were eighteen. ABC News ↗

What exactly failed

The framework contract was signed by the Romanian state company Romtehnica with Rheinmetall Landsysteme in December 2023 on behalf of the land forces, and its value is 328 million euros. At the start of 2024 Romania sent four systems to Germany, 24 twin 35 mm cannons in all, from Oerlikon GDF 103 systems. Digi24 ↗

Each battery is to receive six twin GDF009 TREO cannons, a Skymaster fire-control system, an X-TAR3D radar and automatic loading. The result is meant to be a C-RAM-class capability, that is, detection, tracking and destruction of small rockets and artillery shells, extended to counter-drone fighting. The first two systems, worth 166 million, were to be handed over on 15 April this year, and the remaining two, worth 162 million, by 20 December. Asked by G4Media, the ministry said the supplier expects to hand over the first pair in September 2026, that is, in the current month. Libertatea ↗

The president: "It happens"

The story was broken on Wednesday by the G4Media portal as an exclusive from the ministry document, and the same day Adevărul, Libertatea and Digi24 picked it up. President Nicușor Dan responded to it in New York, where he was attending the UN General Assembly.

"It happens. It is an acceptance procedure, which can be fixed," he replied. He added that, as far as he knows, this is not a purchase under the SAFE programme but an older procurement by the Romanian state. G4Media ↗

The remark about the SAFE programme has a political dimension. SAFE is a new European loan instrument for rearmament, and by this, in our reading, Dan signals that the failure does not fall on the new joint mechanism but on national procurement from before the rearmament wave. Politically it is a defensible distinction. In substance it is cold comfort, because it concerns a capability that Romania needs right now.

Why this goes beyond Romania

In its overview for ABC News, the Romanian defence ministry further stated that in 2026 up to 17 August it found drones or their remains on its territory in 27 cases, while in the whole of 2025 there were 16, and that Russia attacked targets near the Romanian border 54 times, versus 28 attacks in the whole previous year. Four drones were downed in Romanian airspace — three were shot down by Romanian F-16 fighters, the fourth by a Spanish F-18. The figure of 23 from the introduction counts airspace violations, while 27 counts finds of drones or their remains on the ground, so they are not the same quantity. The ministry itself adds that from the available evidence it cannot conclude that the rise in incidents is a deliberate targeting of specific places. ABC News ↗

The economics of this kind of defence are unforgiving. A single Patriot system interceptor costs, according to ABC News, roughly four million dollars, while a Russian Shahed-type drone costs twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars. One can read from this why cheaper means, for example cannons with programmable ammunition, are attractive. ABC News ↗

In July, when Romania shot down a third drone in three days and summoned the Russian ambassador Al Jazeera ↗, President Nicușor Dan reacted. "It is unacceptable and intolerable for the Russian Federation to continue violating the airspace of Romania, which is at the same time the airspace of NATO and the European Union," he wrote. HotNews ↗

Meanwhile the European Union is building its own layer. The counter-drone defence initiative was, according to plan, to get going in the first quarter of this year, is to have initial operational capability at the end of 2026 and full capability only at the end of 2027. Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 ↗ In April the Commission decided on 1.07 billion euros for 57 new defence fund projects, of which more than fifteen support four flagship programmes, including the counter-drone initiative. Európska komisia ↗

The Romanian report came on the day when a drone paralysed Berlin's airport for 45 minutes HN ↗, the Baltic states asked the European Commission for money to fight drones HN ↗ and a Russian Mi-8 helicopter violated Polish airspace for 42 seconds, which Warsaw called a test of its readiness Markíza ↗.

Read also: Germany opened a counter-drone centre against hybrid attacks. On the same day, an agent of Russian intelligence was given a five-year sentence

What this means for Slovakia

The Slovak parallel took place on the same day and in a similar tone. After a government meeting, Defence Minister Robert Kaliňák said that individual parts of the Israeli Barak MX system are arriving continuously, and attributed the delay to the crisis in the Middle East. "I think that, considering the crisis it finds itself in, the supplier company is doing its utmost," he declared. Slovakia ordered the system at the end of 2024, with delivery of the first battery due at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026; it received it in April. SME ↗

Two NATO countries, two delayed air-defence deliveries and two politicians who spoke about the delay in a conciliatory way. In Romania, according to the ministry document, the supplier cites technical faults and the supply chain; in Slovakia the reason is given by the customer — the defence minister, who stood up for the supplier. The analogy has its limit: in Romania it concerns a not-yet-accepted modernisation of the country's own equipment, in Slovakia delayed deliveries of a new system whose first battery the country already has.

Limits of this view

We know the ministry document only through G4Media's exclusive. The text we read does not say how the outlet obtained it, and we do not have the document at our disposal. In the passages it quotes, specific defects are not named beyond the wording about unmet technical requirements, so we do not know whether it was the radar, the fire control or the ammunition. We did not find Rheinmetall's own public statement as of the date of publication, and we know its reasons second-hand from Romanian reporting.

Failing an acceptance test is also not the same as unusable equipment. It is the moment when the customer refuses to accept the work, and the contract works as it should: penalties accrue. Romania has not lost the cannons, it still owns them. But as long as they are in Germany, it does not have them at its disposal, so the delay is not merely an accounting item.

When reading the Romanian media, one must also factor in domestic politics. In Bucharest, according to Adevărul, talks between PNL, USR and UDMR on the allocation of ministries in the forthcoming government of Siegfried Mureșan were blocked that same evening Adevărul ↗ and President Dan rejects early elections Digi24 ↗. USR, according to the same source, is also demanding the defence portfolio, so defence procurement is at the moment also a subject of coalition dispute in Bucharest.

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*Illustrative photo: a twin 35 mm Oerlikon GDF-003 cannon of the same family at an air show at Songshan base in Taiwan in 2011. Not a Romanian unit. Author 玄史生 (Xuan Shisheng), CC BY-SA 3.0 licence via Wikimedia Commons.*