A few days before the NATO Summit in Vilnius, the TSF I was in Lithuania, at the Šiauliai base, where the F-16s of the Portuguese Air Force are stationed, in maximum readiness. It is from there that they leave for police missions in the Baltic.
In the last three months, the pilots of the F-16 fighters of the Portuguese Air Force, under the command of NATO, have already intercepted almost fifty Russian planes, in 15 real alert missions.
in conversation with TSFthe commander of the national force deployed in Lithuania, reveals that the number of interceptions of Russian Federation aircraft near European airspace is an increasingly frequent reality.
“During these 15 missions, we can intercept [e] identify 46 aircraft of the Russian Federation, namely intelligence gathering aircraft and aircraft [tipo] hunting,” said the commander of the National Force Deployed in the Baltic, Pilot-Aviator Major, code name Viriato.
Despite the circumstances, it affirms that there is no evidence of hostile actions by the intercepted aircraft, nor is “different behavior verified. Of course, they are different aircraft. The training of the pilots themselves is different, but as a rule there is a great cordiality in the air.”
The interception takes place without any verbal communication. But eye contact between NATO and Russian pilots is frequent. “Usually there’s eye contact and we say a little ‘hello,’ but it’s not much more than that,” he says.
“For the crossing they activate us through NATO means. They take us to the position of the aircraft to intervene, we get relatively close and basically we do an escort”, details the pilot, saying that in practice the mission serves to collect relevant data for airspace safety.
“Our presence next to the aircraft helps civil controllers to know the position of the intercepted aircraft, because many times they do not have any contact with civil air control bodies or do not have electronic identification means to identify the radars.”
“We took some notes on the identification of elements of the aircraft, we are identifying the tail numbers, the weapons on board, [e] the number of people. And, there it is, less normal behavior,” she said.
The number of Russian planes intercepted by NATO has nearly doubled since the invasion of Ukraine. According to data from the Combined Air Operations Center in Europe, of the 300 interceptions recorded in 2021, 580 Russian aircraft were intercepted in European airspace.
The expectation, expressed to TSF, by the commander of this Center that coordinates, of the entire air surveillance mission on the northern flank of Europe, Major General of the Belgian Air Force Harold Van Pee, is that by 2023 the number of interceptions of Russian aircraft, including fighter jets, close to European airspace may again be exceeded.
“Now we have three to four or five a week. Some weeks are busier than others. Sometimes we rarely have a real alert. Other times we have about 10 or 15 in a week. So it depends. But I would say there are about five real alerts a week in this part of Europe. Our southern European counterpart will probably have similar activities as well,” he said.
Since 2007, the Portuguese Air Force has assumed the leadership of the forces deployed in the Baltic in five missions, of the six already carried out.
“We have a detachment of 82 military personnel, including maintenance personnel and operations and logistics personnel, mostly from BA5 in Monte Real, but also personnel from Lisbon,” says the pilot, assuming that “it is a very small number , but enough to maintain this type of operation.”
In addition to the four Portuguese planes, at the Lithuanian Šiauliai base there are another four F16 fighters from the Romanian Air Force, on high alert.
The Portuguese pilot states that “training with allies is the best tool to ensure preparation and continue the role in defending the airspace of NATO member and partner countries and to preserve and maintain peace.”
“Our forces maintain a very high availability posture, ready to take off at any time, day or night, to identify and monitor any aircraft that does not meet well-defined security criteria when entering the airspace under our responsibility,” he details. .
Since 2007, the Romanian air force also began to ensure surveillance of that region, with F-16 Carpathian Vipers, which replaced the aging Russian LanceRs MiG-21 fighter jets, which were previously part of its arsenal.
Source: TSF
