NATO has run a counter-drone training serial over Lithuania and Latvia, drawing together Allied fighters and ground-based air defences in a single integrated air defence scenario under the alliance’s Eastern Sentry activity.
The training took place on 27 May 2026 and was led by NATO Allied Air Command at Ramstein in Germany. According to the alliance, it brought together Romanian and Portuguese F-16 fighters, Lithuanian surface-based air and missile defence units, a Spanish NASAMS air defence system and a Romanian Patriot battery in a counter-unmanned aerial system scenario built around Integrated Air and Missile Defence, the framework NATO treats as the backbone of its air defence.
The Romanian F-16s involved came from the ‘Carpathian Vipers’ detachment operating out of Šiauliai in Lithuania, which currently contributes to NATO’s Air Policing mission in the Baltic region. NATO said their role in the exercise tied routine vigilance to the wider air and missile defence effort, showing how a deployed fighter detachment can both safeguard alliance airspace day to day and respond to emerging airborne threats.
Airborne command and control was provided by NATO’s Airborne Warning and Control System, which the alliance said handled cross-domain coordination and passed notional target information to the air and ground units taking part. Oversight of the activity ran through NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centre at Uedem, which directed the air defence operations across the region.
NATO characterised the training as a demonstration of its ability to fold air, ground and enabling assets into a single air defence posture, combining national systems under alliance command to detect, track and respond to threats in the air.
Eastern Sentry itself grew directly out of events the previous autumn. NATO announced the activity on 12 September 2025, after Russian drones violated Polish airspace two days earlier, an episode that led Polish and allied forces to shoot down several drones, the first time NATO had taken such action since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russian drones and aircraft breached the airspace of several Allies that month, among them Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, prompting consultations under Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
