The Swedish Air Force scrambled its Quick Reaction Alert fighters twice in a single day to intercept Russian military aircraft over the Baltic Sea, with pairs of JAS 39 Gripen jets sent up after detecting a Russian Su-24 and a Su-34 near Swedish airspace, the Swedish Air Force has said.
The two incidents took place on Friday in the southern and eastern parts of the Baltic Sea, the air force said, with each involving a single Russian aircraft, one the Su-24 strike jet and the other the Su-34 fighter-bomber. The Quick Reaction Alert responded swiftly on detecting the Russian flights, with two pairs of Gripens launched to assert national sovereignty and to intercept and identify the aircraft. According to the air force, Swedish airspace was not violated during either incident.
The Swedish Air Force said it had adapted its posture and increased the readiness of its fighter force in response to the deteriorated security situation of recent times, in order to meet what it described as the increased threat to allied airspace. The reference to allied airspace reflects Sweden’s position inside NATO, the country having joined the alliance in 2024 after abandoning two centuries of military non-alignment in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Quick Reaction Alert is the standing armed readiness that air forces hold to launch fighters at short notice to meet unidentified or potentially hostile aircraft approaching their airspace, a routine that has run continuously throughout the Cold War and after. Interceptions of Russian aircraft over the Baltic have become a regular feature of operations for the air forces ringing the sea, with Russian flights frequently transiting between mainland Russia and the exclave of Kaliningrad, often without filing flight plans or using transponders, which obliges allied fighters to go up and identify them.
The double scramble comes against a backdrop of heightened tension over the Baltic, a sea now almost entirely ringed by NATO members following the accession of Sweden and Finland, and at a moment of sustained allied air activity in the region. NATO’s BALTOPS naval exercise is under way with around 6,000 personnel and twenty warships, and the alliance’s air policing arrangements over the Baltic states have been busy, with French fighters having downed a drone over Latvia earlier in the week after it strayed into Latvian airspace amid Russian electronic warfare.
The Su-24 and Su-34 are both frontline Russian strike aircraft that have been used extensively in the war against Ukraine, the older Su-24 a swing-wing tactical bomber dating from the Soviet era and the Su-34 a more modern fighter-bomber, and both are regular visitors to the airspace over the Baltic where Russian aviation operates in close proximity to NATO’s eastern flank.
Putin’s plan to expand Russian influence and prevent the strengthening of NATO by taking over Ukraine is going swimmingly.
NATO is fraying, but the EU nations are stronger now than they were in 2021 and growing stronger every year. When Putin loses in Ukraine, and that is highly likely, he will be faced with two Marcher Lords, Poland and Ukraine. Backstopping them will be Finland and the invigorated Baltic States, along with forward deployed troops from the UK, the US, Canada, France, Italy and Spain.
NATO will probably never be the same post-Trump, but the US will still have troops in Poland, Germany and Italy.
Putin must be wondering which of his security team is most likely to administer the 9mm impeachment…
That’s it Russia, get your Baltic planes in the sky and keep them safe from Ukrainian drones for a few hours. Pity the 15th Naval Arsenal at St Petersburg didn’t have flight capability. We’ll, that’s to say, it did, but only briefly.
NATO in action. And over Ukraine. The Russian airforce has proven to be largely useless. Not even close to achieving air Superiority. No precision guided munitions. That large fleet on paper has proven to be very ineffective. Against Typhoons, Gripens, F35As & Bs, F16s F15Es, F18s, Rafales and legacy Mirage 2000Ds & German/Italian Tornados. They would be hammered. And that’s before we talk about collective ISTAR capabilities.