Russia intercepts German spy plane in Baltic Sea

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Russia intercepted this Monday (16) a German maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare spy plane that approached its airspace in the Baltic Sea, in full tension between Moscow and the West over the conflict in Ukraine — and on the same day that fell the German Minister of Defense due to the war.

A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter from the Baltic Sea Fleet, based in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, was on patrol and was diverted to rendezvous with a P-3C Orion from the German Navy. The Russian jet escorted the four-engine propeller from Berlin during its passage through the region.

Once the P-3C turned around, the fighter returned to its home base. There was, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, no invasion of its airspace. Germany operates eight of these planes, the most classic of their kind in the world — Brazil has nine of them. Old, should be replaced by the modern P-8 Poseidon, based on the Boeing-737.

Such interceptions have always been common, but have skyrocketed since the annexation of Crimea by the Russians in 2014 and with the Ukraine War in February 2022. The practice in these cases is that adversaries test the ability and response time of enemies , without invading your airspace.

Thus, a fighter “shadows” a spy plane, drone or bomber, without getting too close, until it moves away. Sometimes things go wrong, like when a Chinese J-8 fighter rammed an electronic warfare version of the US P-3 in the South China Sea in 2001 — Beijing’s aircraft was lost and the rival’s spy plane was damaged. and inspected on the ground.

After the invasion of Ukraine, there were at least two invasions of Swedish airspace by Russian aircraft, in March and April. At the end of September, a Russian Su-27 fired a missile near a British spy plane in the Black Sea, and at the end of the year a Chinese J-11 fighter nearly collided with an American RC-135 spy plane in the South Sea. China.

There are some sore spots on the world map of these occurrences. In the Taiwan Strait, China has doubled its incursions to activate the air defenses of the autonomous island that it considers its own in 2022, the year in which tensions between the two governments exploded. The South China Sea is another common meeting place.

The Baltic and the Black Sea, together with the theater of operations in Ukraine, are other classic fields of incidents, which intensified significantly after the start of the war. There is also activity in the Arctic, in regions close to Alaska and Murmansk, home of the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet.

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