A British spy plane narrowly escaped disaster in an incident involving Russian warplanes over the Black Sea last autumn. This emerges from consistent British and American media reports, which quote from the US secret documents on the Ukraine war published on the Internet. After that, on September 29 last year, a Russian fighter jet fired a missile at the surveillance aircraft in international airspace. However, due to a technical error, the bullet missed its target. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace only confirmed a “potentially dangerous” incident at the time and said he had discussed it with his Russian colleague Sergei Shoygu.
In the leaked documents, on the other hand, there is talk of an “almost launch”. The New York Times Two unnamed Pentagon sources confirmed the accuracy of the documents and the serious nature of the incident. The British Ministry of Defense, on the other hand, had Daily Mail insisted the documents contained “inaccuracies” and did not accurately reflect “what happened in international airspace over the Black Sea”.
According to the reports, the pilot of a Russian fired SU-27-Fighter jets aborted the missile due to a misunderstanding. Out of sight of the British aircraft, he had the four-engined Type RC-135 Rivet Joint already targeted and obviously did not understand exactly what instructions the control center on the ground was giving him. Nevertheless, he fired the missile, which narrowly missed its target. The RC-135 is used to monitor radio communications and to detect radioactive particle concentrations in the air. It is flown by a crew of three and, depending on the mission, has between 21 and 27 people on board as technical personnel. Shooting down the plane would undoubtedly have led to a massive escalation in tensions between Russia and NATO.
The British are now also sending fighter jets to the region
Since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, there have been repeated dangerous incidents in the airspace over the Black Sea. According to reports, there were also explosive situations after September 29, in which Russian aircraft approached British, French and American aircraft at a distance of less than 50 meters. Since the incident in the autumn, British reconnaissance aircraft from typhoon– Fighter jets escorted. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin apparently ordered that American planes are only allowed to approach Crimea to a distance of about 90 kilometers. The international limit in airspace is a good 20 kilometers.
The near miss brings back memories of a catastrophic Cold War incident. In September 1983 a Soviet fighter jet shot down a Korean one Jumbo jet off course on a flight from Anchorage to Seoul and flew over Soviet territory. The fighter pilot had not clearly identified the civilian machine, but was still given permission to shoot it down. 269 people died.