The Norwegian Armed Forces released a video of a Russian fighter jet flying uncomfortably close to a Norwegian F-16, highlighting potential collision risks when intercepting Russian aircraft in international airspace on behalf of NATO.
“What the hell!” a Norwegian pilot said dodging Russian MiG-31that was some 20 metres from the plane he was flying.
In 2014 Norwegian combat aircraft have taken 43 flights to intercept Russian jets which entered European airspace. In 2005 only 16 similar cases were reported, the Wall Street Journal says.
NATO has conducted over 100 intercepts of Russian aircraft in January-October of 2014, which is about three times more than were conducted in 2013. On 28 and 29 October 2014 NATO detected and monitored four groups of Russian military aircraft conducting significant military manoeuvers in European airspace over the Baltic Sea, North Sea/Atlantic Ocean, and Black Sea.
According to London-based think-tank ELN, Russia is trying to intimidate NATO. Its latest survey, Dangerous Brinkmanship, noted that what happened to flight MH17 over Ukraine in July almost happened over Sweden three months earlier. It says that on 3 March an SAS 737 passenger jet, carrying 132 people from Copenhagen to Rome, had a near miss close to Malmo, Sweden, with a Russian reconaissance plane which had failed to transmit its position. It adds that ‘major loss of life’ was avoided only due to ‘good visibility and the alertness of the passenger pilots’. The report also listed 11 other ‘serious incidents’ which risked ‘escalation’.
Russian military aircraft are posing a threat to civilian planes by turning off communications devices and failing to file flight plans, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said on Monday.
U.S. Ambassador Douglas Lute said there had been “multiple incidents” where Russian military aircraft had not filed flight plans nor spoken to civilian air traffic controllers, and had turned off transponders that send information about the plane, Reuters reports.
