For the first time, two Italian Air Force F-35 Lightning II fighters scrambled from Ämari Air Base, Estonia, in response to Russian aircraft under NATO’s Air Policing mission.
The intercept marks a significant operational milestone for the Italian contingent deployed in the Baltic region.
The scramble was carried out by the Italian Task Force Air – 32nd Wing detachment, which is on Quick Reaction Alert 24/7. Operating from Ämari, the detachment demonstrates NATO’s commitment to safeguarding Allied airspace and maintaining readiness on its eastern flank.
A NATO statement emphasised that the mission underscores the Alliance’s ability to respond rapidly to potential incursions. The Air Policing mission is designed to preserve the integrity of NATO airspace and reassure member states in the face of increased Russian military activity near Alliance borders.
Within NATO, air policing is a collective and purely defensive mission, carried out using member nations’ fighter aircraft on quick reaction alert. The system relies on a network of radar sites, control centres and Combined Air Operations Centres, which together form the NATO Integrated Air Defence System. This network ensures constant 24/7 surveillance and the ability to respond within seconds to potential airspace incidents.
Member states without their own fast-jet air defence capability are covered by other Allies. Luxembourg’s airspace is protected by Belgian fighters, Slovenia’s by Italian aircraft, and Albania’s by Italian and Greek jets. The Baltic States have been covered since joining NATO in 2004, with rotations initially from Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania and, from 2014, also from Ämari Air Base in Estonia. Deployments generally involve four fighters and 50–100 support personnel.
To maintain readiness and standardise procedures across nations, NATO runs the Ramstein Alloy training series, building on experience from Baltic Region Training Events. These exercises involve both deployed Allied aircrews and the air forces of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, ensuring the mission is conducted professionally and safely while reinforcing Alliance solidarity on NATO’s north-eastern flank.
Just a thought… but during an intercept, it’s probably best to be behind the Russian jet 😬
If they don’t fly parallel then the pilots will miss each others friendly hand gestures.
👌👈🖕
Thanks for clearing that up. I just don’t understand why NATO still insists on throwing out gang signs when we should be smashing them man to man from behind.
That’s like saying “If you’re encountering a trespasser you should draw a loaded and made ready firearm and point it at their face.”
Which is generally a bad idea (American Police notwithstanding). It leaves you no option to escalate beyond deadly force, and also put the other person into an instantly threatened and defensive position where they might do something stupid.
Look at the picture again — I was just joking. Next time, I’ll make it more obvious:
“Who’s intercepting who?”
#LightenUp
Ha ha,
Frustrating here, isn’t it !
#funnyguy
I only made a joke (not funny enough to be classed as a joke) and now WW3 is being discussed 👌🤣
The picture of two aircraft flying side by side?
Also jokes should be funny.
Why did the tomato turn red? Because it saw the salad dressing…
It’s a stock photo. And I think we can trust the highly trained fighter pilot knows what he’s doing. Whilst also following rules of engagement.
Jesus another one… 😬
#I’m reading a book about anti-gravity… it’s impossible to put down.
You wasn’t really joking though was you.
Well done you got someone to read the comments for you 👏
#Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field.
Is it frustrating though? Many commentators here say daft super aggressive things here all the time, at least your name gives the game away.
JJ gives what away exactly 🤫
My name came about after my humourous remarks on a TVR owners site, came under fire from someone with zero, zilch sense of humour at all. He called me a “Halfwit” to which I thanked him for recognising 50% of my wit.
“Redshift” would indicate you are on another wavelength ?
Last week a chap called “Grinch” also commented on my chosen handle.
I just think he was acting the part though.
🤔👀🤦♂️
There is another alternative Dern, they stray a metre into NATO airspace and we just shoot them down; it is all Russians understand.
They endanger Civillian airtraffic, we shoot them down.
They drag up cables? We sink them and the crew.
We take any and every opportunity to kill Russians and make the world the a better place.
I accept you may disagree with me on this issue.
Ah yes, starting World War 3 over an air traffic violation… that’s reasonable.
Actually Dern
Care to explain what the commies have ever done to transgressions when the aircraft had their responders switched ON?
It won’t start WW3, the individual Russian is ambivalent about another Russian dying, not so keen on themselves.
We also understand English. You didn not mention gas pipelines.
You should come to ukraine if you want to kill Russians, I heard a rumour there are some there and ukraine is in need of more hero’s 😉
Are you looking forward to Fridays meeting? Do you wonder why europe was not invited?
Ah, Ulya, I understand from Daniele Mandelli that you are a Russian bloke sort of part time “Looker in’r” who occasionally gives another side to the story. I’ll look forward to seeing you comment from now on. It’s always good to get both sides of an Aargument/discussion/battle of wits.
I guess you skipped the draft ? Or are you serving ?
Morning Halfwit.
Ulya says she is female.
She has a partner but says she’s not in the military.
She works abroad often, recently in Tehran.
Her brother is in the Airborne, is it called VDV?
She lives near Astrakhan, which, if you know your Russian geography, is just in the area north of the Caspian, S,E of Volgograd. ( Stalingrad.)
I’ve had some friendly chats with her ( or him ) over the years about Stalingrad, as I for one respect what Russia went through on the Eastern Front, no matter how fascist and hostile to us that their government is now.
And I try to see both sides of things if I can.
Indeed, I’d have liked to have visited the Mamayev Kurgan in Stalingrad to pay my respects. Not happening now, sadly.
Since 2022 Ulya is not posting as often, maybe understandably.
Oh, thanks Daniele, “She” has been rather forthcoming with her personal details then.
I know bugger all about Russian Geography in any detail so I’ll go take a refresher.
I always feel it’s better to listen to “the other side” rather than to just listen to the western version.
Hopefully Ulya can stick around and help us see how it is from her viewpoint.
The sacrifices that British and commonwealth people made helping Russia after Germany turned on them was huge and painfull, the deaths of so many Russians was a staggering waste of life, let’s hope we never stop trying to find a way to all live peacefully.
Well, it might well all be bollox mate.
I tend to, maybe naively, take people at face value until shown otherwise.
Yes, plenty of detail, quite possibly all untrue.
On Ukraine, many Russians think differently to us and if Ulya is as said she’s going to defend that POV.
Do you remember J in MK?
Another who was a Russian troll pn UKDJ for a long time, and long outed and long gone from here, but still found in various pro Russian forums online.
Some suggest they are the same poster.
Which i suspect myself on a few others on this forum.
Ah yes, the pointless meeting where Putin will insist that UKR does not exist, their government are Nazis, and he is keeping the territory that his forces have invaded.
Trump will make a few comments that he is unhappy, threaten sanctions and tariffs, but will essentially do nothing that will make a difference.
We leave killing Russians to your illustrious leader Pooptin and half a dozen 18th floor slippy balcony floors! How’s Tehran at the moment? Had to move locations after a few bunker busters eh! Glad to see you back and that the bot has flagged up any stories with “Russian” and “Ukraine” for you to generically post.
Airborne, it’s pretty clear that Ulya isn’t a bot. They’ve been around for years and engage in good faith with the discussions, however, well, misguided their beliefs are.
And I believe that this comment illustrates my point from above perfectly, thank you DB.
Don’t try to take away the most entertaining aspect of this site Redshift, if there was no comment section there would be no point coming back. Don’t you get goose bumps from all the long distance bravery?
Difficult to tell at that angle and their relative size.
Hmm, interesting picture, as it seems the Italian F35 isn’t carrying WVRAAM under its wings? The assumption is that it has AMRAAMs in the weapons bays.
I haven’t seen many pictures of F35s with anything other than ASRAAMs on the wing pylons, come to think of it.
Maybe the fins on Sidewinder interact badly RCS wise?
According to several radar scattering simulations, the wing-mounted ASRAAM and AIM-9X both have a negligible impact on overall radar return from the frontal aspect. In fact, it has been suggested that due to the effect of destructive interference caused by the external wingtip stores, those wing-mounted missiles might actually further reduce radar return from some angles.
Given that the Lightning is built primarily for frontal aspect stealth, pilots seek to keep adversary aircraft within their frontal 40 degree arc (the direction from which the Lightning is stealthiest), which also helps to limit the impact of wing-mounted missiles.
Thanks leh, you really have been going in for the radar stuff recently!
I saw somewhere an idea for wingtip-mounted internal weapons bays, maybe that should be looked into? Part of the reasoning behind ASRAAM having a longer range was that it’s all very well shooting the other guy down, it’s escaping to fight another day that matters. I wonder whether that sort of thing was thought about in doing the RCS reductions for the current crop of stealth jets.
Have a look at the ASRAAM’s spec’s vs Sidewinder/Iris-T. You’ll see ASRAAM is a fair bit wider in diameter, but of a similar length. This means ASRAAM has a bigger rocket motor = more thrust = more acceleration and a higher terminal velocity. Plus with a wider body it holds more fuel, so it can go that bit further. Which gives the pilot the advantage of being able to fire first and then bug out before the opponent is in range to return the favour.
Also take a look at the F35’s wing tip launcher itself. You’ll notice that it is cranked over at an angle. This is to help reduce the radar cross section when viewed from the side. Although ASRAAM has its four tail fins arranged 90 degrees to each other. Which does make for a perfect reflector, the size is pretty small, so the effect only becomes a problem when fairly close to a transmitter.
The F35 (all variants) is cleared to carry either ASRAAM or Sidewinder on the wing tip hardpoints. Neither are cleared to be carried in the weapons bays. At this point in time Iris-T is not integrated on the aircraft. I’m not sure if it will be either, as I’ve not read of the integration requirement. The countries that operate f35 and have Iris-t for their other jets, e.g. Italy, Germany and Greece bought Sidewinder as part of the deal.
Torp ref your response to me regarding Ulya, sorry to say mate it is, as I’ve been here quite some time, although mostly on the sidelines at the moment, it’s a troll thingy bot whatever, when you could review ALL previous posts and contributions from each poster I can assure you it/she/he was clocked as a bot/troll and didn’t like it. Either way it’s not an issue what you believe it to be mate I just thought I’d give you the heads up! Cheers.
Hi DB, thanks for the reply (posting here to avoid limited thread length).
Is there a particular reason why we don’t see missiles with non-cruciform fins, to reduce RCS? I could imagine a triangular ASRAAM, though 5 fins might be better in terms of storage and wingspan. Surely modern flight control systems could deal with the turn components from fins at an angle to each other?
Hi TorpedoJ, yes. air to air missiles have to be very aerobatic, yet also responsive. A cruciform arrangement gives you the best compromise for surface area for the flight controls. There is a balance required between how much lift they can generate for the turning moment, trying to minimize the form and skin friction drag. Not forgetting how much clearance they have with various parts of an aircraft. For example on the KF21, there are four under fuselage locations for semi-recessed BVRAAM (AMRAAM and Meteor), where one of the fins sits inside a slot in the aircraft.
To have the same surface area, a triangular arrangement would require much larger fins. Having more control fins, you may start to find that the airflow around them interferes with other fins. Another example is the grid fin. This is a way to increase the control’s surface area, without dramatically increasing the actual overall size. Giving superior control, but the downside is that they are very draggy. The other option, is reduce the fin size, but supplement them with reaction jets placed either in the forebody (Patriot) or mid-body (Aster).
Due to the speeds that these missiles reach, building the fins out of a composite (fibre glass/carbon fibre) material is normally not used. As the composite fins can’t maintain their strength at elevated temperatures. Also these types of fins are easily damaged by small particulates found in the air. In the main, fins are made out of high temperature resistant metals such as stainless steel and titanium alloys. Using metals arranged in a cruciform pattern, does make a perfect radar reflector. But a lot will depend on what the radar frequency is, generally anything transmission with a wavelength longer than the fin size, won’t be as effectively reflected. Smaller wavelengths will be effectively reflected.
I am thinking seeing as the F35 is a steal jet, maybe it had fly infront to be seen? Jk..
Hey Jim, Is your wife controlling these, remotely ?
Or have you got her fluffing up your armchair pillows ?
It’s OK, I was born like it.
😆
😂
If I wanted a good laugh, I’d follow you into the jon and watch you take a leak 😁
Cool, you can normally find me at the “Donkey” sanctuary, I tend to relax and let it all hang out there.
Robert, you do make me smile, your humour should be more widely used on here, It does feel rather stuffy here most days.
I have my moments. 😉
Brilliant, we got UKDJ comments section lore before the first deliveries of the Type 26 😭
I do like the feel of the comments at the moment, I don’t know whether it’s just Halfwit but it all feels much more good-natured and flowing than it did .
More than can be said for other sites!
These Other Sites ? ah, I guess you don’t like the new Age Restricted Rules on them now !
Don’t worry, apparently you are one of 14 million frustrated folk now.
“You are not alone”. 👀😁💪
Ha, was referring to e.g. Navy Lookout where a few loudmouths are so confident in their own correctness that they shout down opposing viewpoints.
It’s nice to have a bit of banter from time to time, though I imagine Jim has had quite a shock being the centre of attention!
You should try the TVR owners site ! and the Motorhome one, oh and the Solar Instalation help and advice one. I don’t bother with that NL place, not since it failed to save the Royal Navy !
Took a look earlier when JJ mentioned it and It looks like a really busy place.
Jim has broad shoulders, he mentioned the Hoover thing and It just had to attract some Banter, I’m sure he’ll suck it up.
No Quotes, they seem to have been labelled as Spam now.
For a week now, I have not been able to Quote either article related words or quotes from other places using the quote signs. Each time it gets held and refused as Spam.
I’m guessing there is some kind of automatic key word/sign system in place ?
Shame really.