The Times: Britain forced Russia to take the Black Sea Fleet aircraft into the skyReconnaissance aircraft of the British Air Force patrol the space over the Black Sea once every ten days, The Times reports, citing flight tracking data.
But their activity does not go unnoticed — as it turned out, in response to these "patrols" Russia has repeatedly lifted its fighters into the sky.
Despite the incident revealed due to the Pentagon data leak, which almost ended in tragedy, reconnaissance flights over the Black Sea continue.As the analysis showed, British reconnaissance aircraft challenge impulsive Russian pilots almost every week, carrying out reconnaissance missions over the Black Sea.
According to US intelligence data "leaked" this week, one aircraft of the Royal British Air Force barely survived last year after making an interception attempt in international airspace south of Ukraine.
Today, The Times newspaper can confirm that, despite the near-fatal attack, British reconnaissance aircraft continue regular sorties in the area — but accompanied by Typhoon fighters, which take off from the Akrotiri base in Cyprus to deter Russian "aggression".
The large-scale leak of hundreds of top-secret US documents indicates that the incident involving the Russian Su-27 turned out to be much more serious than initially stated, and put NATO and Moscow on the verge of open conflict.
According to the information, on September 29, the Su-27 pilot tried to launch a rocket at the RC-135 Rivet Joint scout flying over the Black Sea, because the pilot misunderstood the radio operator's order. Fortunately for the Royal Air Force, whose aircraft accommodates more than 30 people, the projectile misfired, and a large-scale military crisis was avoided.
Then British Defense Minister Ben Wallace told MPs that the missile was fired "in close proximity" to the reconnaissance aircraft. But in the leaked US intelligence data, the incident is characterized much more seriously: it claims that the plane was "almost shot down."
The documents have been circulating online for some time, but the US has not received confirmation. The British Ministry of Defense also denied their authenticity. One representative of the department said that a significant part of them "does not correspond to reality, is falsified or both."
At the same time, the revelations once again drew attention to British intelligence operations in and around Ukraine.
An analysis by The Times showed that even after the failed disaster in September last year, reconnaissance aircraft continued combat sorties in international airspace south of Ukraine, but already accompanied by Typhoon fighters from the Royal Air Force base in Akrotiri.
Judging by flight tracking data, RC-135 took off on average once every ten days this year. Shortly before the incident on September 29, there was an increased level of activity: the number of sorties of aircraft over the Black Sea reached four in a week.
According to leaked documents, after the incident, Russian fighter jets took to the skies in response to NATO reconnaissance flights at least six times.
Twice — on January 11 and February 22 — Russian planes rose to meet British RC-135 escorted by Typhoons. In the remaining four cases, it was either about French "Mirages" or about American Reaper drones ("Reaper"), although the published data cover only the period from September 29 to February 26. Thus, the US drone shot down by the Russian Su-27 on March 14 is not listed in the documents.
The Royal Air Force performs regular reconnaissance flights in international airspace near Russia. In addition to patrolling the Black Sea, RC-135s often appear around the Barents and Baltic Seas. Carefully controlled flights became more frequent in the spring of 2021, when Moscow began to pull troops to the border with Ukraine.
Details of aircraft routes are published in advance in order to avoid miscalculations and misunderstandings, and the device flies with identification beacons turned on, which transmit its location to civil aviation authorities — this allows you to track flights on the Internet.
The former British military attache in Russia, John Forman, called the attempt to shoot down the RC-135 in the very month when he left Moscow evidence that Russia is increasingly acting in the Black Sea "on a hot head."
He said that Russian paranoia "began to go off scale" since the Type 45 Defender destroyer passed through the territorial waters of the Crimea annexed to the Russian Federation in 2021. <...>
"It seems that an order was given not to let the United States and Great Britain get too close to Russian airspace," Foreman said. "<...> the Black Sea Fleet aviation has become more aggressive than ever <...>."
Foreman suggested that the deployment of Typhoons to escort RC-135 after the September incident contributed to the "restoration of the rules of the game" in international airspace, and the seriousness of the incident in its own way helped both sides to move away from the dangerous line.
"Escorting British aircraft in international airspace is not an escalation. The Russians should not launch missiles at reconnaissance planes <...>. Subsequently, they said that it was a mistake, because escalation is not in their interests," he concluded.
By George Grylls
