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26-07-2024, 02:10 AM
UK Leads Crimean Air Reconnaissance Operations Against Russian Air Defenses. A
RAF Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft and its twin Typhoon EuroFighter escort over international waters of the Black Sea. A U.S. Boeing RC-135W aircraft operating over Black Sea play mouse with Russian forces for almost 4-hours as it probed Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula air defenses. At one point it switched off its transponders, effectively disappearing from civilian radars for more than an hour offshore from the major Russian base of Sevastopol.
The mission only ended after a Russian Sukhoi-27 (NATO: Flanker) fighter caught up with the British four-engine aircraft, based on Boeing’s C-135 Stratolifter airframe, along with its two fighter escorts in international air space.
A Cold War-era spy plane continually updated by Boeing, the RC-135 is crammed with electronics designed to detect and fix the location of radars and transmitters. Its main use is to gather data on the location of enemy air defense systems. NATO routinely operates RC-135s over southeastern Romania, but only rarely deploys the unarmed planes over the Black Sea, according to open-source flight tracking data.
Air traffic data reviewed by Kyiv, the RC-135W with call sign RRR7224 took off from England Waddington base, and flew across Europe b4 reaching Black Sea at about 11:00 Universal Metric Time (UMT). Launched from Mihail Kogălniceanu airport, a NATO air base near the Romanian port city of Constanta, tailed the flying escort patterns ranging close-in, at 50 kilometers (31 miles) distance, flight data showed.
RAF Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft and its twin Typhoon EuroFighter escort over international waters of the Black Sea. A U.S. Boeing RC-135W aircraft operating over Black Sea play mouse with Russian forces for almost 4-hours as it probed Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula air defenses. At one point it switched off its transponders, effectively disappearing from civilian radars for more than an hour offshore from the major Russian base of Sevastopol.
The mission only ended after a Russian Sukhoi-27 (NATO: Flanker) fighter caught up with the British four-engine aircraft, based on Boeing’s C-135 Stratolifter airframe, along with its two fighter escorts in international air space.
A Cold War-era spy plane continually updated by Boeing, the RC-135 is crammed with electronics designed to detect and fix the location of radars and transmitters. Its main use is to gather data on the location of enemy air defense systems. NATO routinely operates RC-135s over southeastern Romania, but only rarely deploys the unarmed planes over the Black Sea, according to open-source flight tracking data.
Air traffic data reviewed by Kyiv, the RC-135W with call sign RRR7224 took off from England Waddington base, and flew across Europe b4 reaching Black Sea at about 11:00 Universal Metric Time (UMT). Launched from Mihail Kogălniceanu airport, a NATO air base near the Romanian port city of Constanta, tailed the flying escort patterns ranging close-in, at 50 kilometers (31 miles) distance, flight data showed.
