Royal Air Force Typhoons from 140 Expeditionary Air Wing (EAW), currently deployed to Romania for enhanced Air Policing, have joined Exercise Astral Knight 24 in Poland.
This Integrated Air & Missile Defence (IAMD) exercise involves joint air operations with the Polish Air Force’s F-16s.
More than 50 personnel from 140 EAW flew from Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase to the 31st Air Base in Krzesiny, also known as Poznań-Krzesiny Airport, to support three Typhoons from IX(Bomber) Squadron. These aircraft are performing joint air operations with the Polish Air Force F-16s.
Exercise Astral Knight 24 is part of the Large-Scale Global Exercise (LSGE), designed to present a multi-regional IAMD challenge to the Combined Forces Commander. The exercise involves 5,000 personnel from six nations, including the UK, US, Lithuania, Greece, Denmark, and Poland. The UK’s participation underscores its commitment to strengthening ties with the Baltic states.
Flight Lieutenant Clarke, an RAF Typhoon pilot, described the RAF’s role in the exercise:
“Our role in the exercise is conducting DCA, which stands for Defensive Counter Air. We’re acting in a defensive posture against a simulated attack on European countries. There have been many nations contributing to this exercise, and we’ve all learned a lot from each other on how to move forward as part of NATO.
It has been a very successful mission, and the Polish Air Force has supported us fantastically. We’re very grateful for all their support throughout the exercise and look forward to working with them again in the near future.”
Once the exercise concludes, the squadron will return to Romania to continue Operation Biloxi, which involves enhanced air policing. Following this, they will head back to RAF Lossiemouth to prepare for deployment on Op Shader.
So west-central Poland within a short flight to sample the Kaliningrad GPS EW threat and see how Eurofighter Typhoon is effected, if at all.
Safe flight LXX Squadron..
Cynic! NATO testing Russian AD like the Russians test our AD, I doubt it very much…
Then again, I wonder how much fun German SEAD pilots have with that? Depending on the tenacity of the pilot, it might get hairy and the Russians may well have itchy trigger fingers.
I was thinking about the Kaliningrad GPS electronic warfare that has been disrupting navigation and targeting in Ukraine assuming that its the same equipment type. Let’s hope their A2A ordnance is defective like the ruz QRA that fired on our RC135W Rivet Joint in international waters over the Black Sea. We will never know if that was RJ EW that defeated the missile or failure to design, test, maintain and train in the terrorist state. I suppose for an ISTAR mission that was bonus data collection. I’ve no clue how Typhoon compares to Rivet Joint which are different eras and… Read more »