Italian Nato fighter shoots down drone over Lithuania after string of Baltic airspace breaches

A Nato fighter has shot down a drone over Lithuania after it crossed into the country from Belarus, in the first such interception over Lithuanian territory.

The drone was destroyed at around 20 minutes past midnight by Italian fighter jets which took off from Šiauliai Air Base, according to the Lithuanian military.

The drone fell in a rural area near Lake Kaunas, in the centre of the country. Authorities will examine the drone debris to determine who it belonged to.

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Ukrainian drones have repeatedly crossed Nato borders

The incident comes after several Ukrainian military drones strayed into the airspace of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia during attacks on targets in Russia this year.

Ukraine blamed the incidents on Russia affecting the drones' paths with electromagnetic warfare.

In March, a Ukrainian drone crashed onto a frozen lake in Lithuania. 

Lithuanian officials said the Ukrainian drone had gone astray while taking part in an attack on Russia's Primorsk oil terminal.

Two days later, wreckage from another Ukrainian drone was recovered in Latvia after it entered Latvian airspace from the direction of Russia.

Finnish investigators have since confirmed that four military drones which came down in Finland between late March and April were also Ukrainian.

All four were assessed to have been carrying explosives and three had to be made safe in controlled detonations. 

Finnish authorities concluded last week that GNSS (global navigation satellite system)jamming detected in the region, combined with prevailing winds, had caused the aircraft to deviate from their intended routes.

Nato fighters have protected the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia since the three states joined the alliance in 2004.

The Baltic countries do not operate their own fighter fleets, so allies rotate aircraft and personnel through bases in the region.

For most of its existence, Baltic Air Policing concentrated on identifying and escorting military aircraft approaching allied airspace.

That role has changed as drones increasingly cross Nato borders.

The first armed interception by Nato's Baltic mission came on 19 May, when a Romanian F-16 shot down a drone over Estonia after it entered from Russian airspace.

The Estonian Defence Forces said the aircraft was probably Ukrainian and that the incursion took place amid heavy Russian electronic warfare, including GPS spoofing and jamming. 

In July, Nato agreed to upgrade the Baltic Air Policing mission towards air defence, widening the mandate available to pilots to include destroying objects assessed to pose a threat.

The May and June interceptions were described by Nato as the first occasions on which the mission had opened fire in defence of the alliance.

On 14 August, an Italian fighter shot down a further drone over eastern Latvia. The Latvian Armed Forces identified it as Ukrainian and said it had entered from Belarus.

The repeated incursions have also exposed a practical problem for Nato: using advanced fighters and expensive weapons against comparatively cheap drones.

Mr Rutte acknowledged that problem in June, saying the alliance could not rely indefinitely on costly interceptors and needed lower-cost counter-drone systems capable of dealing with individual UAVs and larger swarms.