- Recent drone and balloon sightings caused temporary airport closures in the Netherlands and Lithuania.
- European officials are increasingly concerned about airspace violations as a form of hybrid warfare.
- Lithuania attributes balloon incursions to Belarusian smugglers but calls the activity a state-sponsored "hybrid attack."
- NATO's eastern flank faces a pattern of airspace breaches, including a Russian attack drone crash in Latvia.
- The EU is responding with new defense proposals, including a "drone wall" to protect its borders.
European airspace is under a new form of siege, not from fighter jets but from unmanned and seemingly low-tech aerial objects. In a series of disruptive incidents, airports in Lithuania and the Netherlands were forced to temporarily halt all operations in late November 2025 after sightings of balloons and drones, marking the latest in a months-long pattern of incursions that is stretching NATO’s vigilance and testing its eastern borders.
These events, ranging from contraband-carrying balloons to mysterious drones near military bases, have escalated regional tensions, forced a re-evaluation of continental defense and raised urgent questions about the vulnerability of Europe's critical infrastructure in this era of hybrid threats.
The immediate disruptions were stark. On November 24, Lithuania’s Vilnius Airport twice closed its airspace overnight due to balloon sightings, diverting flights and marking the capital's ninth such shutdown since early October. Hours earlier, on the evening of November 22, both civilian and military air traffic at the Netherlands’ Eindhoven Airport was suspended after reports of "multiple drones."
Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans confirmed that responsive measures were taken but withheld details for security reasons, stating simply, "Disruption of air traffic with drones is unacceptable." These incidents are not isolated. Recent months have seen similar flight groundings in Sweden, Belgium and Denmark, creating a continent-wide pattern of aerial nuisance and menace.
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