by Sergey Adamov
[REGNUM] The NATO bloc, declaring that it is not a party to the conflict in Ukraine, is in fact actively conducting reconnaissance in the immediate vicinity of the Ukrainian borders.
In 2022, the United States and its NATO allies increased the number of sorties to the borders of Russia with their reconnaissance aircraft. The activity of foreign intelligence services has become the subject of observation by a number of Internet portals that monitor global air traffic. The collected information makes it possible to establish that the NATO countries are using almost the entire range of reconnaissance assets available to them, which have been on duty near the Russian borders almost around the clock over the past few months.
Starting in 2014, the command of the US Army is gradually returning to the strategy of the Cold War, one of the important components of which is the constant conduct of reconnaissance missions as close as possible to the border of a potential enemy. Year after year, US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft increased the number of flights to the Russian maritime borders in the Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory. Gradually, aircraft from other NATO countries, as well as drones of various types, began to join them.
In 2020-2021, American drones began to enter the airspace of Ukraine, gradually approaching the land borders of Russia. With the start of a special military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, this practice in the United States had to be abandoned. However, the total number of NATO air sorties in the region has not only not decreased, but has seriously increased.
The activity of reconnaissance aircraft of NATO countries near the Russian borders can be tracked using services that control air traffic. Often the aircraft of the US Air Force and its allies do not turn off the transponders, so their route, location and call signs are in the public domain.
For example, according to the Flightradar service, on December 29, 2022, a Boeing E-3B Sentry airborne early warning aircraft (callsign NATO11), belonging to the European command of NATO forces, was spotted in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The tasks of such an aircraft include "scanning" the airspace and tracking aircraft, as well as other air targets at a distance of 400 to 650 km (the distance to Sevastopol from the aircraft patrol area is only 350 km).
According to monitoring data, the plane took off from one of the NATO bases in Romania and flew in a circular trajectory for 5-6 hours. He was accompanied by a Turkish Air Force radio detection aircraft Boeing E-7T (callsign TURAF42). And the US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft Boeing RC-135W (call sign - JAKE11).
At the same time, a US Air Force Bombardier Challenger 650 (callsign CL60) was circling along the southern borders of Ukraine. This aircraft model is used for conducting electronic intelligence, however, the exact characteristics of the equipment are classified.
If we take into account that on December 29 a missile strike was launched on the territory of Ukraine, then the task of reconnaissance aviation becomes clear: tracking the movements of bombers, the time of missile launches, calculating their trajectory, and so on. It can even be assumed that such actions are not directly aimed at supporting Ukraine, rather, NATO countries are solving their tasks of training crews for reconnaissance aircraft in conditions close to combat.
Note that two of the four aircraft performing reconnaissance tasks near the borders of Russia belong to the US Air Force. However, NATO allies are also involved in these operations. There are also reverse situations.
For example, according to the ItaMilRadar blog, on December 27, an Italian Air Force aircraft - Boeing KC-767A (call sign MM62 227) - performed the tasks of refueling the Bombardier Challenger 650 reconnaissance aircraft, which we wrote about above. According to monitoring data, the planes met several times in the immediate vicinity of the border between Romania and Moldova, where the refueling process took place.
During the day on December 28, in the sky over the eastern part of the Black Sea, there was a reconnaissance aircraft Boeing RC-135W (callsign RRR7258) of the Royal Air Force, which took off from the Waddington base, which was accompanied by a Gulfstream E.550 CAEW reconnaissance aircraft of the Italian Air Force (callsign PERSEO71) from the Pratika- di Mare.
We can draw the following conclusions.
First, the US Air Force is the most active near the borders of Russia.
Nevertheless (this is the second) NATO allies (from Italy, Turkey and Great Britain) are regularly involved in reconnaissance and auxiliary tasks.
Thirdly, states such as Romania and Bulgaria provide their airspace for such tasks, as well as deploy reconnaissance aircraft on their territory.
Fourthly, on "normal days" in the Eastern Mediterranean, there is a "duty couple". For example, at the time of this writing (December 30), another flight was made by the Bombardier Challenger 650, which is accompanied by the Air Force RQ-4B Global Hawk drone flying in the region of the southern coast of Crimea. During the days of active Russian aviation in the Black Sea region, up to five or six aircraft can operate simultaneously.