NATO fighters over Europe

Several hundred emergency starts from NATO fighters. Most of them target Russian planes

The World Daily | News Desk           DECEMBER  28th   2020

NATO headquarters reported that approximately 350 of the 400 recorded Alliance fighter missions were aimed at identifying and observing Russian aircrafts. The number of interventions against the aviation of the armed forces of Russia increased compared to the previous year.

As noted by NATO, Russian military planes often do not provide any data on their location and flight altitude, do not report their flight plan or do not contact ground air traffic control, which poses a potential threat to civil air transport.

Compared to 2019, the number of intercepted flights of the Russian armed forces has increased slightly this year. According to the North Atlantic Alliance headquarters, in 2020, out of 400 emergency calls, about 350 were related to Russian planes.

Emergency take-offs of Russian fighters

Emergency take-offs are necessary to identify the suspect aircraft and its nationality, and to establish whether it has unsafe intentions. In extreme cases, it is possible to force it to land.

A significant part of NATO's emergency fighter missions take place as part of Air Policing, i.e. protecting the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. As these three Baltic states of the Alliance do not have their own fighter aircrafts, they are protected by aircrafts from other NATO nations stationed as part of rotating teams in Šiauliai, Lithuania and Amari, Estonia.

NATO has two aviation operational centres in Europe. One tasked with controlling airspace over northern Europe is located in Germany. The second, in Spain, focuses on the south of the continent.

The World Daily | News Desk