Romanian counter-drone systems failed acceptance tests. A day later a drone fell near Suceava, and F-16 fighter jets did not shoot it down

Two of the four air defence systems that Romania sent to Germany's Rheinmetall to be converted for counter-drone use failed the Defence Ministry's acceptance tests. This follows from a ministry document that the portal G4Media viewed and quoted. They were to be handed over on 15 April and are still not finished, more than five months after the deadline. G4Media ↗ A day after the report was published, the whole affair took concrete shape. On Thursday morning a drone flew into Romania from Ukraine, spent roughly four minutes over the north of the country and fell into a forest near the town of Solca in Suceava County. Two Romanian F-16 fighter jets took off but did not shoot the drone down, and the authorities report no casualties or damage. Libertatea ↗

According to the 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 and took responsibility for replacing components. Penalties keep running until an acceptance protocol is signed without reservations. Adevărul ↗ How much the penalties amount to was stated on Wednesday by acting Defence Minister Radu Miruță. According to him, it is tens of thousands of euros for each day of delay, and the contract calculates them separately for each of the four systems, counted from its own deadline. "We can't turn a blind eye; substantial penalties are being applied, tens of thousands of euros for each day of delay," he said. Adevărul ↗ Libertatea ↗

The delay hits a country where Russian drones are violating its airspace with growing frequency. The Romanian Defence Ministry provided the American ABC News with an overview according to which Russian drones violated Romanian airspace at least twenty-three times in 2026 up to 17 August. That is more often than in the whole 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 it is worth 328 million euros. At the beginning of 2024 Romania sent four systems to Germany, 24 twin-barrelled 35 mm guns in total, from Oerlikon GDF 103 systems. Digi24 ↗

Each battery is to receive six twin-barrelled GDF009 TREO guns, the Skymaster fire control system, an X-TAR3D radar and automatic loading. The result is to be a C-RAM-class capability, that is, detecting, tracking and destroying small rockets and artillery shells, extended to counter-drone warfare. 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. In response to a question from G4Media, the ministry said the supplier expects to hand over the first pair in September 2026, that is, in the current month. Libertatea ↗ The minister himself, however, doubts that date. Asked whether the first pair will arrive in September after all, he replied that the ministry is waiting for it too: "We are waiting too, until they arrive." Five days remain until the end of the month. Adevărul ↗

The president: "It happens"

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

"It happens. It's 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. On our reading, Dan is signalling 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. Factually it is cold comfort, because this is a capability 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. It also said that Russia attacked targets near the Romanian border 54 times, against 28 attacks in the whole previous year. Four drones came down in Romanian airspace: three were shot down by Romanian F-16 fighter jets, the fourth by a Spanish F-18. The number 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 deliberate targeting of specific places. ABC News ↗

How this looks in practice was shown on Thursday. The ministry's radars picked up a target on Ukrainian territory near the border; the drone flew into Romanian airspace across the north of Botoșani County and fell near Solca. The authorities sent out RO-Alert warnings, and in four villages classes did not start until ten o'clock. The night before, two Spanish F-18s also took off from Mihail Kogălniceanu base, when a group of drones appeared on the Ukrainian side of the border north of Chilia Veche. Libertatea ↗ Digi24 ↗

Acting Defence Minister Radu Miruță explained why nobody shot the drone down. According to him, the conditions for an intervention did not come together at the same time, and the drone flew for four minutes over an uninhabited area. "It's not a computer game where I mark something with a mouse and it disappears," he told Digi24, adding that there are also situations where the army does not have the capacity in a given place to shoot a drone down. According to him, the drone has "slightly new technical characteristics" compared with those that have so far fallen or been shot down in Romania, and the number of violations this year is already three times that of 2025. He did not explicitly accuse Russia of sending the drone, but said a protest against Moscow is necessary. Digi24 ↗ HotNews ↗

The interview with the minister was broadcast on Thursday morning by the Romanian television channel Digi24. During it, the channel shows footage of the drone wreckage in the forest near Solca, published by the regional portal News Bucovina. The commentary is in Romanian.



Whether the guns that have been in Germany since the start of 2024 would have sufficed for a four-minute flight cannot be said from the available data. The minister spoke of conditions that had to come together at once, not of missing equipment. The timing, however, is striking: on Wednesday Romania learned that the first two modernised batteries had failed acceptance tests, and on Thursday a drone flew over it that was not shot down.

The same night also hit Moldova. According to its Defence Ministry, four drones flew over the north of the country and the authorities closed the airspace there for a time. Near the village of Cernița in Florești district, police found a drone bearing elements of the Russian Gerbera type, which according to them is the first such find in the country. "Russia's war threatens the whole of Europe," wrote President Maia Sandu. Ziarul de Gardă ↗ Ziarul de Gardă ↗ According to the governor of Ukraine's Chernivtsi Region, Russian drones that night were aimed at border crossings with Romania and Moldova. Kyiv Independent ↗

The economics of this type of defence is unforgiving. According to ABC News, a single Patriot missile costs about four million dollars, while a Russian Shahed-type drone costs twenty to fifty thousand dollars. It is easy to see from this why cheaper means, such as guns 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 Romania's airspace, which is also the airspace of NATO and the European Union," he wrote. HotNews ↗

The European Union is meanwhile building its own layer. According to the plan, the counter-drone initiative was to get going in the first quarter of this year, reach 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, moreover, came on the day when a drone paralysed a Berlin 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 described as a test of its readiness Markíza ↗.

Read also: Germany opens a counter-drone centre against hybrid attacks. The same day, a Russian intelligence agent received 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 on an ongoing basis, and attributed the delay to the crisis in the Middle East. "I think that, given 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 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 commented on 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 defended the supplier. The analogy has its limits: in Romania it concerns a modernisation of the country's own equipment that has not been accepted, while in Slovakia it concerns delayed deliveries of a new system, the first battery of which 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 G4Media 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 the problem was the radar, the fire control or the ammunition. We found no public statement by Rheinmetall itself as of the publication date, and we know its reasons second-hand from Romanian reporting. For Thursday's drone we rely on statements by the ministry and the minister. No technical assessment of the wreckage has been published, so what exactly is new about the drone we do not yet know.

Failing an acceptance test is also not the same as unusable equipment. It is the moment when the customer refuses to take over the work, and the contract works as it should: the penalties run. Romania has not lost the guns; it still owns them. While they are in Germany, however, it does not have them available, so the delay is not just an accounting item.

Domestic politics must also be added to the reading of Romanian media. According to Adevărul, in Bucharest the negotiations of PNL, USR and UDMR on the allocation of ministries in the government being prepared by Siegfried Mureșan were blocked that same evening Adevărul ↗, and President Dan rejects early elections Digi24 ↗. According to the same source, USR is also demanding the defence portfolio, so defence procurement is at the moment also the subject of a coalition dispute in Bucharest.

What hotinfo is watching

*Illustrative photo: a twin-barrelled 35 mm Oerlikon GDF-003 gun 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), licence CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.*