NATO has agreed to transform its long-running Baltic air policing operation into a full-scale air defense mission, giving allied pilots broader authority — including the power to destroy “objects that pose a threat” — Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda announced Wednesday.
The air policing mission covering Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — three Baltic nations near Russia that do not maintain their own fighter jet fleets — has been in operation since 2004, when all three countries joined the NATO alliance.
Under the current mission, allied aircraft intercept and escort Russian military planes flying near the three nations. Earlier this year, those jets shot down suspected stray Ukrainian drones over Estonia and Latvia — events NATO described as the first time the mission had ever fired weapons in defense of the alliance.
“(The current) air policing mission is meant for peacetime, when fighters react to incidents by escorting. This way, we show that we take note of the incidents. It’s a kind of deterrence,” Nauseda told reporters in Ankara.
“But what is happening today is not a totally peaceful environment,” he added.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna announced on X that the upgraded mission would bring “greater flexibility and faster response to air threats.”
At present, Baltic Air Policing jets are dispatched to intercept and identify every Russian military aircraft flying over international waters near the three Baltic states — a stretch of airspace running from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the Gulf of Finland, extending to the border of Russia itself.
The mission was previously expanded in 2014 following Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. It currently involves more than a dozen fighter jets from up to three rotating NATO member nations, operating out of two airfields in the region.
Last year, the mission jets were scrambled after Russia sent a Su-35 fighter to escort a shadow oil fleet tanker that Estonia had attempted to detain. The NATO aircraft did not engage the Russian Su-35.
