Solca drone crash, Suceava County, 24 Sep 2026

A drone crossed into Romanian airspace near the Ukrainian border early on September 24, 2026, and crashed in a forest near Solca, Suceava County, four minutes later, Romania's Ministry of National Defence (MApN) said. Romanian radar first picked up the object over Ukrainian territory, close to the border. Romania's Interior Ministry emergency service then issued an RO-Alert warning for Botoșani County residents, before the object crossed into Romanian airspace. No casualties or damage were reported. AirVeto's wind-model data for the window shows a strong flow from the northwest over Suceava County at the altitudes the object would have crossed.

A video, credited by Digi24 to News.ro, captured the drone gradually losing altitude in the moments before it went down, with a man's voice audible in the clip. MApN said two F-16s were scrambled to monitor the object after it was detected. European Pravda separately reported that Spanish Air and Space Force F-18s also took off in response to drone activity along the border that night. An IAR-330 SOCAT helicopter from the 95th Air Base in Bacău took off at 07:21 local time (04:21 UTC) to survey the crash site. Interior Ministry response teams reached the site, secured the perimeter and recovered a small drone with no fire at the point of impact.

The defence minister says this drone looks different from earlier ones

Cursdeguvernare.ro reported that Romania's interim Defence Minister, Radu Miruță, said in a Digi24 television appearance that the recovered drone had "somewhat newer technical characteristics" than devices found in earlier incidents, without specifying what had changed. "This is something we do constantly: from every drone we find, we extract whatever we think is useful so we can optimize the measures the Ministry of Defence takes," Miruță said. "Obviously, with what we have available." Romanian officials have not named the drone's country of origin or confirmed its model. Similar devices recovered near the Ukrainian border in 2026 have been identified as Russian Shahed-type or Gerbera-type loitering munitions and decoys.

The crash followed a wider overnight strike on Ukraine

The Solca crash came during a mass Russian missile and drone strike on Ukraine overnight on September 23 to 24, which Ukraine's Air Force said also sent drones across the border into Moldova. Moldova's Ministry of Defence reported four separate incursions into its own airspace that morning, with drone wreckage found and examined in the country's Florești and Șoldănești districts, a related event AirVeto has reconstructed separately.

Romania's 2026 drone count keeps climbing

The Solca crash is the 17th drone incident AirVeto has reconstructed in Romanian territory in 2026, following incidents in Galați, Tulcea, Vaslui and Constanța counties earlier in the year. One of those, the Băleni-Cudalbi intercept in Galați County on August 16, saw Spanish F-18s on NATO air-policing duty shoot a drone down.

Wind conditions over Suceava County

At 05:00 local time on September 24, close to the crossing, the wind at 1,000 m blew from the WNW at 30 km/h. At 2,000 m it came from the NW at 41 km/h. At 3,000 m it also came from the NW, at 50 km/h, a strong and consistent flow through the layers the drone crossed on its short run into Romanian airspace.

This reconstruction is based on reporting by European Pravda, Cursdeguvernare.ro, AGERPRES and Digi24, and on AirVeto's wind-model data for the 02:00-04:21 UTC window on September 24, 2026. How the model is built and where it is reliable is on the methodology page. A full archive of drone and airspace incidents across the EU's eastern border is at the incident archive.