NATO has upgraded its two-decade-old Baltic air policing mission into air defense, giving pilots a wider mandate that includes destroying "objects that pose a threat," Reuters reported. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda announced the decision, taken at the alliance summit in Ankara. The change ends a peacetime-only format that dates to 2004.

From escort duty to shoot-down authority

The air policing mission over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia began in 2004, immediately after the three states joined NATO. None of them operates its own fighter jets, so allied aircraft identify and escort Russian military planes flying near their borders.

"(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," Nausėda told reporters in Ankara. "But what is happening today is not a totally peaceful environment."

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna wrote on X that the upgraded mission will have "greater flexibility and faster response to air threats."

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First shots came this year

NATO jets opened fire under the mission for the first time this year, downing suspected stray Ukrainian drones over Estonia in May and over Latvia in June. A Romanian F-16 carried out the first shootdown over Estonia's Lake Võrtsjärv; French jets downed the Latvian intruder three weeks later.

The drones were Ukrainian aircraft aimed at military targets inside Russia but either strayed off course or were diverted by Russian electronic warfare. Kyiv and Baltic governments assess that Moscow redirects them into NATO airspace deliberately. The wave of incursions this spring forced airport closures, triggered repeated air alerts, and brought down Latvia's government.

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A mission that kept growing

The jets currently scramble to meet every Russian military plane flying over international waters adjacent to the Baltic states, from Russia's Kaliningrad exclave into the Gulf of Finland. NATO expanded the mission in 2014, after Russia seized Crimea. It now includes over a dozen fighters from up to three rotating allies, flying from two regional airfields.

The escort format's limits showed last year, when the jets took off in response to a Russian Su-35 escorting a shadow fleet tanker after Estonia tried to detain the vessel. They did not engage the fighter.