This morning while catching up on the 100 or so news publications I go through every morning a headline in a Dutch paper caught my eye. (English link here) It said that Dutch F-16s had scrambled to intercept two Russian Jets who flew into their airspace without identifying themselves.
Woa, WTF? Is this Russian intimidation like the jet flying over the US warship in the Black sea last week? In fact it got worse. On Sky news it was said that the SAS had CHASED away two Russian Jets!. Now it got serious. How could these two jets get across all of Europe? Without identifying themselves?
It turned out to be just a bit of propaganda to scare the shit out of the European population in order to prepare them for the pending intended war with Russia over Ukraine.
It turns out that, according to the F-16 spotter site, Russian jets fly regularly all over the place without identifying themselves and while NATO jets probably scramble every time to keep en eye on them it is merely a routine event. I’m sure NATO planes do the same over East European and therefor Russian influence territory. Yep, in fact they just announced the will intensify the number of flights over Poland, Romania and the Baltic states while sending 600 troops to Poland for “exercises”.
It is fairly common for Russian bombers to enter NATO airspace without making any radio contact and as usual it was unclear what they were up to.
Standard procedures call for an escort of all non-NATO aircrat like these Bears. Initially German jet fighters flew along with them until they passed through an area in the North Sea for which the Netherlands is responsible at which point they were handed over to the Dutch F-16s. Later on the British Air Force took over with two Typhoons.
The QRA was activated upon request of the Air Operations Control Station Nieuw Milligen (AOCS NM). This happens whenever a plane flies in Dutch airspace without previously having filed a flight plan and without identifying themselves.
AOCS NM is the air traffic control center for all military air traffic in the Netherlands, as well as the center for Air Battle Management, Air Surveillance, Fighter and SAM Control, and Alerting. It is using Dutch Mil as its callsign for air traffic control services, and Bandbox as a callsign for the military Control and Reporting Centre (CRC).
The previous interception of Tu-95 by Dutch F-16s dates from September 11th 2012.
Read more
Aotearoa: A Wider Perspective 