Russia almost downed a British spy plane.
According to a new document from a cache of documents recently leaked from the Pentagon, Russia and NATO were one step away from a potential all-out war last year when a Russian fighter jet almost shot down a British surveillance aircraft. The Washington Post cited the document on Sunday.
The newspaper asserted that the incident, which took place toward the end of September 2022, was significantly more serious than London had previously acknowledged. Ben Wallace, the UK Secretary of Defence, reported the incident to Parliament in October 2022. He added that Moscow attributed the incident to a technical glitch, which London accepted.
The report seen by the Post portrays it as a “close shoot down of UK RJ” – a reference to the ‘Stream Joint’ moniker normal for the RC-135 observation airplane used to gather radio transmissions and electronic messages. In October, the United Kingdom reported that the plane had been intercepted over the Black Sea by two Russian Su-27 fighters, with one of them “releasing a missile” close to the aircraft.
As per the paper, the occurrence might have set off Article 5 of the NATO Deal, potentially prompting the immediate contribution of NATO powers in the contention in Ukraine, or even an immediate struggle among Moscow and the tactical coalition.
According to the Washington Post, neither Russia nor the United Kingdom have commented on the document’s contents. The newspaper also reported that the United States instructed the Air Force to avoid the Crimean Peninsula during reconnaissance missions in the Black Sea region.
According to the Post, a map that is part of the document shows a number of lines drawn over portions of the Black Sea to indicate where American surveillance aircraft can and cannot fly. One of them is approximately 12 nautical miles off the coast of Crimea, which is the distance that, according to international law, defines a nation’s territorial waters.
The “SECDEF Directed Standoff” is a second line drawn approximately 50 nautical miles from the shore. The source claims that this line may suggest that Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, instructed the Air Force to keep their aircraft away from the peninsula.
The document stated that the United States relied on drones, including the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the RQ-170 Sentinel, and the MQ-9 Reaper, in contrast to France and the United Kingdom, which conducted crewed surveillance flights over the Black Sea. Additionally, several unmanned flights take place each month.
In Spring, the Pentagon blamed Russian pilots for wild flying and guaranteed that one of the Russian planes had cut the propeller of a US MQ-9 Collector drone, making it go down. Russia denied using weapons against the drone or hitting it. Additionally, it stated that the US aircraft was operating with its transponder disabled in a Russian military-designated no-go area.
Only a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet buzzing over it and allegedly ejecting fuel is visible in the drone-shot video, according to reports. CNN reports that following the incident, the Pentagon has further rerouted its surveillance drone flights over the Black Sea.
