Portuguese F-16s in Lithuania. ‘We are not here with offensive objectives’

With the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022, the number of interceptions of Russian aircraft in the airspace of NATO countries has practically doubled. Since April this year, F-16 fighters of the Portuguese Air Force have already deployed in 15 real missions in Lithuania, intercepting 46 Russian aircraft during surveillance missions in the Baltic Sea as part of the Atlantic Alliance.

“Everything we do here is very similar to what we do in Portugal, 24 hours a day, every day of the year,” reports the commander of the national force deployed in the Baltic Sea, major pilot-flyer of the Portuguese Air Force who prefers to use the codename in this conversation viriato.

The meeting with the DN takes place at the Lithuanian base of Šiauliai, a few tens of kilometers from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. It is from this area that “a large movement of aircraft” departs for the territory of Russia. “Many of these aircraft do not meet NATO’s well-defined criteria and are intercepted,” the commander said, giving examples of situations that could “endanger civil aviation”.

In this case it concerns “aircraft that are not identified, that do not establish communication with civil control or that do not have a flight plan”. That is, “their destination is unknown,” says the commander, indicating that several times these Russian aircraft even fulfill military objectives. “We are talking about intelligence-gathering missions, aircraft with electronic military intelligence-gathering systems or combat aircraft,” he explained.

The commander makes a point of saying that the mission from the base in Lithuania takes place exactly “in the same way” as others carried out from “airbase n.º 5 of Monte Real”, in the municipality of Leiria, where “the Reaction Force – Quick Reaction Alert -, with two aircraft and a maintenance team, guaranteeing the 24-hour readiness of the aircraft, for the defense of Portuguese airspace”.

“Here, in Lithuania, we do this service for NATO allies,” he says, trying to draw a parallel with what they do “at home”, in Portugal, with “maximum professionalism, according to the rules, with the utmost rigor , to avoid any misinterpretation by the other forces”.

The truth is that the statistics are clear on the number of interceptions, which have practically doubled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The commander of the Combined Air Operations Center (in Uedem, Germany), Harold Van Pee, in charge of coordinating surveillance of the northern half of Europe, says interceptions of Russian military aircraft in the order of “three, four, five a week”.

“Some weeks are busier than others. Sometimes we rarely have an alpha scramble [alerta real]. Other times we have 10 or 15 in a week.”quantifies this Major General of the Belgian Air Force, in a conversation with the DN, aboard an Airbus A330 military version of the NATO aircraft, transformed for fuel supply, in full flight next to the aircraft of the Allies in charge of the air police in Europe.

“The air policing mission, in peacetime, is not the most complicated one that can be done with a fighter jet,” admits the Commander of the Combined Air Operations Center, stating that it is a “quite standardized intervention, which allows you to deploy resources from one country [o espaço aéreo de] other countries, to do the NATO police”.

“We try to make the best possible use of all national air forces. When we have unidentified or unauthorized air traffic flying into Europe, it sometimes takes ten minutes to get to the next country and usually never more than 30-45 minutes to end up in a new country.” country”, details Harold Van Pee, convinced that centralized coordination through NATO assets guarantees “more efficient patrols”.

“The fighter jets under NATO control are allowed to cross the air borders of the various allied countries without any problem. They should constantly hand over responsibility for the mission,” he explains.

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO strengthened air policing on its eastern borders and maintains a police mission in the Adriatic Sea. Since 2006, after the end of the US mission, Iceland has had periodic Allied deployments to protect its airspace. The Benelux countries (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) have been taking turns defending their airspace since 2017.

Ensuring all aircraft are in service “24 hours a day, 365 days a year” sometimes requires air supply, which is why the A330 is supplied by a multinational consortium that includes Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the Czech Republic.

“The air-to-air tank training missions are the most common. Almost every day, the planes of our units fly air-to-air tank training missions all over Europe, especially Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, more or less the areas where we fly today,” says DN, the commander of the multinational transport and refueling fleet, Patrick Mollet, brigadier general of the European Air Transport Command, during the flight to Šiauliai.

Despite the reinforcement of resources, the mission of the air police over the past seven years has been “exactly the same as it has been in decades”, describes Harold Van Pee, who admits that “as much as it is surprising that the missions are planned as in peacetime”, not in the last because, underlined, “NATO is not at war”.
At the Šiauliai base, the commander of the Portuguese force deployed in the Baltic States said that the Portuguese pilots are “committed to collective defense”, according to “standardized procedures, according to very homogeneous standards”, meaning that NATO can be “ready to to respond to any request”.

“We’re not here with offensive targets, we’re on an air defense mission, protecting the national airspace from allied forces that don’t have that capability,” as is the case with the Baltic countries.

“As a rule, if there’s an intersection, we try to take identifying elements from the aircraft we’re identifying. Tail numbers, weapons on board, [e] the number of people. And there it’s a bit less normal behavior,” says the Portuguese captain, although he admits that there is generally “a great cordiality in the air” between pilots, even when there is eye contact.

“As a rule, we do not verify different behavior”, despite “they are different aircraft and pilot training is different”, but [quando] “there are visual contacts, we say a little hello, that’s all,” Major Viriato tells DN, admitting to being “aware” of the delicate moment regarding Russia.

more data

– The military detachment consists of four F-16 fighter aircraft and 82 military personnel. They took over command of the mission in April. They will be surrendered by Italian soldiers in July.

– In the six missions in the Baltic Sea, since 2007, it is the fifth time that the Portuguese Air Force assumes the leading role of the deployed forces. In addition to the four Portuguese aircraft, the Lithuanian base in Šiauliai has four other F-16 fighters of the Romanian Air Force.

– NATO Air Policing was established in 1961, during the Cold War, as part of the Integrated Air and Missile Defense System. This is a structured service using aircraft from Allied countries, under the direct coordination of the High Command of the Atlantic Alliance. It currently conducts five regional air policing missions.