A U.S. RC-135 Rivet Joint violated the Swedish airspace recently in an (unconfirmed) attempt to escape interception by Russian fighter jets, Swedish media outlet says.

According to DN.se, on Jul. 18, an RC-135 Rivet Joint spyplane crossed the Swedish airspace, during a reconnaissance mission flown over the Baltic Sea.

U.S. SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) aircraft from RAF Mildenhall have been flying daily missions over the Baltics since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis.

Noteworthy, on Jul. 18, the day after Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, the American aircraft was met twice by Russian interceptors launched by the Russian base just outside Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.

Even if this kind of close encounters take place quite often with Russian and U.S. planes intercepting one another all around the world, the RC-135 reacted in a different way to the second intercept attempt by the Russian fighters. Indeed, the RC-135 asked the permission to cross the Swedish airspace, but when the ATC (Air Traffic Control) center denied the clearance, the Rivet Joint decided to proceed and flew over Gotland island.

Although UK-based RC-135s have flown more than 50 missions in the region, sometimes flying over Poland, sometimes into Lithuania and Latvia, and sometimes over the Baltic Sea near the Russian base in Kaliningrad to eavesdrop Russian signals and collect intelligence data, this was the first time, according to DN.se, that the American plane apparently reacted to the interception attempted by the Russians with an unauthorized short-cut over Sweden.



After overlying Sweden largest island, the RC-135 turned southbound reached the international airspace before entering the Swedish airspace off Oland.

Violations of Swedish airspace are quite frequent (and, sometimes they do not face a response by the Swedish Air Force‘s Gripen jets): seven violations were recorded in 2014, and a total of 53 aircraft have flown without permission inside Stockholm’s airspace since 2009, DN reported.

Image credit: DN.se

H/T to Lars-Gunnar Holmström for the heads-up

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