U.S. recon
aircraft fled from Russians into Swedish air space in July
This incident is being described in evasive language
in the U.S. media. But if the
particulars of the story are true, there’s no putting a good face on it. The U.S. Air Force reconnaissance
aircraft – an unarmed RC-135 signals intelligence collector called “Rivet Joint”
– was challenged in international air space by Russian fighters, while being
targeted with a Russian air defense system, and fled into Swedish air
space.
The description given today by
CNN comports with a narrative
posted 31 July at a Swedish news site, DN.se. The
event occurred on 18 July, the day after the MH17 shootdown. The RC-135, based in the UK, was flying
a mission over the Baltic Sea.
Although the location isn’t reported by CNN, a map posted at DN.se (and
copied at The
Aviationist) shows the
aircraft’s track in the Baltic when it entered Swedish air space on an emergency
basis, in order to get away from the Russian fighters. (See inset map with Swedish annotations
below.)
Citing a U.S. official, CNN provides the following
narrative:
The U.S. plane had been flying in international
airspace, conducting an electronic eavesdropping mission on the Russian
military, when the Russians took the unusual action of beginning to track it
with land-based radar.
The Russians then sent at least one fighter jet into
the sky to intercept the aircraft, the U.S. official said Saturday.
The spy plane crew felt so concerned about the radar
tracking that it wanted to get out of the area as quickly as possible, the
official said. The quickest route away from the Russians took them into Swedish
airspace. The U.S. official acknowledged that was done without Swedish military
approval.
Actually, the use of air tracking radar by regional
air authorities is constant, in the advanced countries, and is not considered by
aviators to be a special threat.
What this passage suggests is that a Russian air defense site was
painting the RC-135 with a targeting/fire control radar. Given the location, the RC-135 was
probably being tracked by the target-tracking radar of Russia’s most advanced
air defense system, the S-400
Triumf (NATO name: SA-21
Growler), which was installed in Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad in
2012.
That said, however, it isn’t unusual for target
countries to turn on targeting radars when foreign military aircraft fly near
their air space. If the mission
commander on the RC-135 felt alarm on 18 July, it may have been in part because
the S-400’s targeting radar (the 92N6E, NATO name GRAVESTONE) showed evidence of
obtaining a firing solution – probably at the same time the Russian fighters
appeared. (The report speaks of “at
least one fighter,” but they fly such intercept missions in pairs.) The RC-135 may also have had other
indications that the targeting episode in this case was particularly serious and
determined.
As the DN.se story observes, the fighter reaction from
the Russians is as normal as the use of the radars. DN.se’s narrative reveals that Swedish
air controllers have watched the same U.S. reconnaissance route and Russian
fighter reaction play out as many as 50 times in recent months (since the U.S.
beefed up our presence in northeastern Europe after the invasion of
Ukraine).
But never before has the USAF RC-135 reacted by
fleeing into Swedish air space.
According to DN.se, which interviewed a military air control official in
Sweden, the RC-135 requested permission to enter Swedish air space, but was
denied permission. (Sweden is not a
member of NATO.) The U.S. aircraft
then entered Swedish air space anyway, flying over the island of
Gotland.
The
reason for exercising force majeure
that way would be to take refuge in air space the Russian fighters were unlikely
to penetrate. Another purpose ...
[See rest at link]
CDR,
USN (Ret.)
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