Bloomberg: Russian stealth aircraft over Europe

Two Russian bomber flying with transponders turned off, making them invisible to detection devices, sank so low that the dispatchers at Dublin Airport were forced to postpone the departure of one passenger aircraft and ordered the other to change course to avoid colliding with the bombers. This 18 incident of February, which the Irish authorities reported only last week, was only the last of a series of dangerous situations arising from rapprochement with Russian military aircraft in the sky over Europe.

According to the commander of the Swedish Air Force, in December the Russian military reconnaissance aircraft almost collided in the air with a SAS passenger plane in southern Sweden. At the beginning of this year, another Russian aircraft approached a dangerous distance from another Swedish-Swedish jet that had just departed from Copenhagen. Russia denies that its aircraft were approaching a dangerous distance to any aircraft.

According to NATO representatives, over the past year there have been more than 100 cases when Russian military aircraft probed the airspace of European states, and sometimes violated it. In most cases, Russian aircraft shut off transponders, electronic devices that commercial jets should use to ensure tracking. As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (JensStoltenberg) stated at a press conference in December, flights without these devices, known as “invisible”, represent a serious danger to the air traffic of civilian vessels.

So can someone get the Russians to turn on these transponders until a catastrophe happens? The European Aviation Safety Agency received a request to prepare a report by the end of this month with proposals to solve this problem. Finland, one of the countries whose airspace also violated Russian aircraft, asked the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to investigate this situation.

However, it seems that Europeans are unlikely to be able to solve this problem. According to the ICAO press secretary, whose headquarters is located in Montreal, the Convention on International Civil Aviation, which defines the basic rules of international aviation, does not apply to "the operation of instruments on military aircraft." In addition, the Russian armed forces are not obliged to obey the rules of the EU.

Russian air maneuvers violate verbal agreements that have been in effect since the end of the Cold War, according to which, according to general rules, military aircraft must include transponders during flight in the area of ​​trains dedicated to civil aviation. Justin Bronk (JustinBronk), a military analyst at the Royal Joint Institute for Military Research in London, says that even in international airspace, the “standard course of action” obliges NATO and air forces of Western countries to include transponders during flight or intelligence missions. “Flying with the transponder turned off in the daytime is a conscious provocation.”

The radar can detect Russian aircraft even with transponders turned off. And although the radar does not provide such detailed information as a transponder signal, some Russian aircraft are quite easy to detect. The Tu-95 bombers, which were approaching the borders of Ireland, "are clearly visible on the radar," says Bronk. "They are old, they have huge wings and propellers." And since NATO member countries are sharing data obtained with a radar, the alliance members most likely followed these planes even before they approached the borders of Ireland. (Ireland is not a member of NATO and does not have its own air force, so Britain raised its jet fighters into the air to accompany the violators).

The situation in the Baltic Sea region looks scary. Fighters taking off from the airbase in the enclave in the Kaliningrad region can reach the airspace of Sweden or the Baltic countries - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - in a matter of minutes, so the air traffic controllers will not have enough time to react. In addition to the cases of dangerous rapprochement with two aircraft of the Swedish airline SAS, last summer there was a case when a Russian jet approached 10 meters from an American aerial reconnaissance aircraft. According to a report prepared last autumn by the London-based analytical organization European Leadership Network, which includes former diplomats and politicians, another American reconnaissance aircraft, performing mission in the Kaliningrad region, was forced to violate the Swedish airspace after two Russian fighters approached it.

According to Bronk, today the best solution is deterrence and intimidation. “A large number of fighters with weapons on board should be kept around the clock,” he says, “and follow a very clear installation — if your plane intrudes into our airspace, it will be shot down.”