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.
There’s generally a procedure for that:
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shootdown
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
Nothing much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shootdown
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.