As part of the Baltops 2021 exercise, the US army "tested" a new Challenger 650 Artemis reconnaissance and target designation aircraft in Russia, Izvestia reports, citing sources in the Russian Defense Ministry.
"An aerial spy can listen to radio communications, detect ground targets, and track their movements. He tried several times to conduct reconnaissance of air defense systems, as well as control and communication points in the Kaliningrad region," the newspaper writes.
The publication assures that when approaching the borders of Russia, the newest spy plane was promptly detected, identified and taken on escort by air defense systems, which tracked several of its flights in the Baltic region, along the borders of the Kaliningrad Region and Belarus, as well as over the Black Sea.
According to the newspaper, the Challenger 650 Artemis received, in particular, devices for remote wiretapping of communication channels, a powerful radar and radio intelligence equipment that detects electromagnetic signals from radars and radio stations and determines the exact location of their source from a distance of hundreds of kilometers.
According to military expert Vladislav Shurygin, according to the scenario, the Baltops exercises were aimed at working out the confrontation with Russia.
In September 2019, the commander of the US Air Force in Europe, Jeffrey Harrigan , said that the Pentagon has a plan to break through the multi-layer air defense of the Kaliningrad region.
In August 2018, Harrigan said that for the past year and a half, the United States has been actively collecting data on Russian military equipment and its capabilities in Syria.
Ivan Potapov
