Slovakia will send low-altitude radars and personnel to operate them to Romania, Romanian defense minister Radu Miruță announced. The deployment is intended to strengthen surveillance along Romania’s eastern border amid repeated Russian drone attacks in neighbouring Ukraine and unauthorized incursions into Romanian airspace.

Radu Miruță thanked his Slovak counterpart, Robert Kaliňák, and the Slovak government for approving the deployment.

“This is a response to the appeal I made at both NATO and European Union level to strengthen surveillance capacity at our eastern border,” the Romanian minister wrote on Facebook. 

Miruță said the decision followed meetings in which Romania presented and argued its need for additional surveillance equipment. He also linked Slovakia’s response to the work carried out by the Romanian Defense Ministry under the EU’s SAFE programs.

The Romanian minister personally thanked Robert Kaliňák during the informal meeting of EU defence ministers in Ireland.

“I stressed once again how important it is to demonstrate in practice how cooperation between states works,” Radu Miruță said.

He e added that Romania had shown it was a reliable partner by fulfilling its own responsibilities before requesting support from its allies.

Low-altitude radars are designed to detect and track targets flying close to the ground. They can help identify drones that are more difficult for some conventional radar systems to detect, according to Biziday.ro.

According to Defense Ministry data updated on August 31, Romania recorded 65 drone attacks near its border in 2026. Military aircraft were scrambled in 50 cases, while 25 unauthorized incursions into Romanian airspace were reported and four drones were shot down. The most recent major incident occurred in August, when a NATO F-18 operated by a Spanish contingent shot down a drone that had entered Romania from Moldova in the Galați area.

In another major incident in May, a drone entered Romanian airspace during a Russian attack on targets in Ukraine. Romanian military radar systems tracked it to Galați, where it crashed onto the roof of an apartment building.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Inquam Photos/George Calin)