NATO scrambled fighter jets from Evenes airbase on Monday after a pair of Russian aircraft came close to the ongoing Joint Viking 2025 exercise.
The two Tu-142 anti-submarine, maritime patrol planes came from the Russian Northern Fleet’s Kipelovo airbase in Vologda region and flew out over international airspace of the Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea in the morning of March 10.
Outside Troms region, the Russian aircraft were shadowed by a pair of Norwegian F-35 fighter jets, operating inside the Arctic Circle on identification mission of NATO. Such missions are known as quick reaction alert (QRA). Appearance of Russian planes is routine when there are multinational forces on exercise in the north, the Norwegian Armed Forces states.
Joint Viking 2025 involves nine NATO member states with more than 10,000 soldiers. […]
Simultaneously as the Russian surveillance planes were circling outside the multi-nation military exercise in northern Norway was a British KC-135 Rivet Joint on intelligence gathering mission close to the Kola Peninsula. The plane flew north over Finland and patrolled back and forth over lake Inari, only a few tens of kilometers from the border with Russia.
Such electronic gathering missions isn’t a new occurrence. Both British and US. Rivet Joint planes have for years monitored Russia’s military fingerprints from the Kola Peninsula. However, flights over northern Finland and by that the ability to collect data from the west side of the militarised Russian region, is something made possible after Finland joined NATO.
NATO-member Norway has self-imposed restrictions for allied intelligence flights in the airspace near its border with Russia, putting a ban on both U.S. and British flights like the one that on Monday took place in over northern Finland. Läs artikel