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.
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.
China’s last warning, you say
For those who don’t get the joke. During the Cold War, China had a habit of issuing “final warnings” which didn’t have any teeth. Since the propaganda was regularly aired over the radio in Russia, Russians began joking about “oh this is china’s third final warning this week, I bet people are scared now” type of stuff.
There’s generally a procedure for that:
- Common frequency warning (ie. Guard frequency, 122.75)
- Close flyby to make the airplane change direction
- Shoot
If you skip the first two steps, you messed up and should be disciplined.
Ideally, the country that made the mistake should reach out to the other country to prevent escalation.
Sure you’re correct, but isn’t it, or shouldn’t it, also be:
Do not try to fly in the airspace you are not supposed to fly in?
I mean the Russians and before them the Soviets have done that deliberately since forever.
If the planes had entered sovereign airspace, sure. They synopsis says the Russians were flying in international airspace, which usually means it’s not under the sovereign control of any nation and the Latvians would have had no basis to fire on the Russians.
Personally, I’d love to see the Russians try to stunt their way into someone’s airspace and get dick slapped for it, but I doubt that would happen.
Oh I see, thanks!
Guard is 121.5 isn’t it?
122.75 is assigned for air-to-air communications.
In some ways that’s good: you don’t want someone shouting about “YOU’RE ON GUARD”. On the other hand, in this situation you want to choose a frequency that your target is actually monitoring, and guard may fit that bill better.
Sorry I meant those as two separate frequencies
I was thinking about that incident a lot lately.
Putin is ultimately an alley bully. He’s weak and only pretends to be powerful, hoping no one calls his bluff.
Turkey called his bluff. Putin was super aggressive, but Turkey just said, well, terrible tragedy, let’s hope that never happens again, right Vlad?
Well and it never happened again. Turkey is a NATO member. A NATO country shot down a Russian jet and nothing happened.
Cowards like Putin can’t be convinced or tamed, they only respond to strength. And currently, NATO doesn’t exactly seem strong.
That’s a different scenario. That was over Syrian/Turkish airspace and Russia likely knew they don’t have a leg to stand on there considering the close vicinity of the border and conflicting reports over the bomber’s flight path. Not to mention that Turkey is a lot closer to Russia than the average NATO state.
I don’t think it could escalate to a full war, but shooting down aircraft in intl. airspace is much more serious than a bomber that has strayed into your national airspace.
Yeah shooting down an aircraft over international waters would probably be a major incident actually.
fuck russia.
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.
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
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
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