NATO fighter jets were scrambled to intercept five Russian military aircraft flying over the Baltic Sea without flight plans or active transponders, the Latvian Air Force confirmed on Saturday.
The Russian planes were identified on two separate occasions, on Friday and Saturday, prompting a rapid response from NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission.
According to the Latvian Air Force, the Russian jets were detected flying in international airspace near the Baltic states, but had not activated their transponders, an electronic system that helps maintain safe air traffic control.
“Russian jets regularly enter the airspace above the Baltics with transponders switched off, likely to test the response of NATO states,” The Kyiv Independent reported, citing past instances of similar activities by Russian aircraft.
It’s funny that these flights represent significant, painful maintenance costs for Russia and are basically training hours for nato
I wonder what would happen if accidentally one of them got shot down.
Putin would be very angry and threaten to use nukes… so basically just another Tuesday.
Yeah shooting down an aircraft over international waters would probably be a major incident actually.
fuck russia.
Loads of countries have been doing shit like this for years. Turkish planes do it to the Greeks, US/UK do it to Lebanon and Palestine, China does it to Taiwan, The US does it to China, India and Pakistan probably do it too.
Not that it’s a good thing, but they’re just testing the detection and interception of NATO. Russia uses standoff weapons which it can deploy from its own airspace, so they don’t have much use flying beyond their borders unless it’s to cause annoyance to neighbouring air patrols.
Not worth the panicked headlines over.
Not worth the panicked headlines over.
Yeah as a Finn, I remember there being a headline every few years of Russians doing this.
They did it before we were in NATO abd obviously it didn’t make them stop.
Not worth the panicked headlines over.
Exactly
Interesting article.
But is that seriously the best AI-generated image they could find for this story?Nevermind, I guess it probably is a real photo, just from a really weird perspective, so it’s like like the plane below it is merging into the plane in the foreground.
I see where you’re coming from on it being AI generated, but I think it’s actually the wings and canards from a second plane perfectly behind the front one. If you look closely, you can see the nose as well.
Oh, fair point.
Strange times that your comment is both wrong and perfectly sensible.
It doesn’t look AI generated
Kyiv Independent - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Kyiv Independent:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - Ukraine
Wikipedia about this sourceNewsweek - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Newsweek:
MBFC: Right-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source
