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.

  • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    It’s funny that these flights represent significant, painful maintenance costs for Russia and are basically training hours for nato

    • orclev@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Putin would be very angry and threaten to use nukes… so basically just another Tuesday.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      There’s generally a procedure for that:

      1. Common frequency warning (ie. Guard frequency, 122.75)
      2. Close flyby to make the airplane change direction
      3. Shoot

      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.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

        • mkwt@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          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.

      • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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        1 month ago

        “Mistake”

        You think 5 Russian jets mistakenly flew into US airspace? They do this shit all the time to many countries, there is zero mistake.

        Shoot the fuckers down and see how often they keep playing this dumbarse game.

        • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          They flew over international waters in the Baltic sea. almost as far away from the US as you can get. No need to get a war boner going.

      • leisesprecher@feddit.org
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        1 month ago

        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.

      • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        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.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Yeah shooting down an aircraft over international waters would probably be a major incident actually.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Loads of countries have been doing shit like this for years. Turkish planes do it to the Greeks, US/UK do it to Lebanon and Palestine, China does it to Taiwan, The US does it to China, India and Pakistan probably do it too.

    Not that it’s a good thing, but they’re just testing the detection and interception of NATO. Russia uses standoff weapons which it can deploy from its own airspace, so they don’t have much use flying beyond their borders unless it’s to cause annoyance to neighbouring air patrols.

    Not worth the panicked headlines over.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Not worth the panicked headlines over.

      Yeah as a Finn, I remember there being a headline every few years of Russians doing this.

      They did it before we were in NATO abd obviously it didn’t make them stop.

      Not worth the panicked headlines over.

      Exactly

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Interesting article. But is that seriously the best AI-generated image they could find for this story?

    Nevermind, I guess it probably is a real photo, just from a really weird perspective, so it’s like like the plane below it is merging into the plane in the foreground.