Two Romanian F-16s operating under NATO command shot down a drone over Romanian Black Sea waters at 10:13 local time Sunday, the third incursion in three days. [1]

The intercept is complete but the attribution is not: President Nicusor Dan said an earlier drone appeared to be a Shahed of a type used by Russia, while AP reported no public forensic chain linking Sunday's wreckage to Russia. [1]

NATO called the event Romania's fourth recent drone downing [1]; that count covers a wider recent period and is not the same denominator as the three incursions in three days, so both figures can be true without being interchangeable.

The difference matters because alliance coverage naturally celebrates visible air defense: fighters launched, tracked a target and destroyed it, yet the public still lacks wreckage analysis, route, launch point, mission and chain of custody for Sunday's drone.

No authorized X post was recovered, so neither triumph nor escalation can be assigned to platform users; AP's "suspected Russian" wording is the correct evidence stage, not timidity, and the next useful record is forensic and operational: recovered components, radar history, NATO review and any change in posture; Romania proved that it intercepted a drone, but it has not publicly proved this one's origin by borrowing the identity of an earlier aircraft.

-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels