Sovereignty on Loan: Who Guards Slovakia's Skies Until the F-16s Arrive

For nearly four years a NATO member has been unable to police its own sky. Slovakia grounded its MiG-29 fleet on 1 September 2022 and donated 13 of the jets to Ukraine; from that same day, Czech Gripens and Polish F-16s took over its air policing under a NATO arrangement, with Hungary joining in July 2023. Slovakia is the cleanest live case of how the alliance backfills a core attribute of statehood during a re-equipment transition.

The gap that 14 jets barely close

The replacement is the F-16 Block 70. Under a 2018 contract worth about $1.6bn, Slovakia bought 14 aircraft for its base at Sliač; the first arrived in mid-2024, and Lockheed Martin completed production of all 14 in December 2025. As of mid-2026 roughly ten are in the country, with the remainder held in the United States for pilot training. Fourteen airframes barely sustain a standing Quick Reaction Alert once maintenance, conversion training and an attrition margin are subtracted — which is precisely why 14 is now on track to become 18.

Sovereignty on loan

Defence Minister Robert Kaliňák has said Slovakia will resume responsibility for its own airspace by the end of summer 2026, and Slovak F-16s are slated to join NATO's Baltic Air Policing by the end of 2027 — turning a net importer of air policing into a contributor. In February 2026, after Prime Minister Robert Fico met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Bratislava opened talks to buy four more F-16s, taking the fleet to 18. Fico framed it in the language of dignity: it is “not a good sign of sovereignty,” he said, that Czech, Hungarian and Polish planes protect Slovak skies.

The Fico paradox

There is a tension worth naming. The same government now invoking national sovereignty to buy more jets inherited — and had earlier criticised — the MiG-29 donation that opened the gap, while tilting politically toward Moscow, the very state the eastern-flank policing exists to deter. Sovereignty is invoked as the reason to re-arm and eroded politically at the same time.

So the question is whether the transition ends the dependence or relocates it. When Slovakia takes back its own Quick Reaction Alert in late 2026 and sends F-16s to the Baltic in 2027, will it have converted borrowed sovereignty into a genuine, exportable air-policing capability — or will an 18-jet fleet stretched across home defence and NATO rotations simply move the dependence somewhere else?