Four Typhoon aircraft have now taken up station at Ämari Air Base in Estonia as 140 Expeditionary Air Wing (EAW) of the Royal Air Force takes its turn on the NATO mission to secure the skies above the Baltic States.
The United Kingdom assumed control of the mission at Amari on April the 28th from the Belgian Air Force, which had been stationed there since January the 7th this year.
The RAF will the perform mission using Typhoon aircraft. Belgium carried out their operations using four F-16 fighter planes.
If all 4 Euro fighters are in the baltic who is policing THE UK
Am I the only person who can see the problem here, neatly lined up aircraft close together! This would never have been allowed in the old days. Even on a secure airbase you still have to use a bit of common sense.
Not relevant in the circumstances.
Accidents happen.
Don’t forget to load some real ammunition, not paint balls. and for Gt Britain’s sake , use it on Russian bandits.
If the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian air forces were to buy themselves some Saab Gripens, they could police their own airspace!
…as no doubt they will one day. meantime there is more about this than just substiting for an air force they dont have. Do try and understand our defence policy as enshrined within the NATO alliance of which the UK remains a rightful leading nation.
I seem to remember reading in a military magazine that NATO policy was for member states to be able to police their own airspace. That was the context for my post.
We have problems policing our own airspace with the defence cuts of the past decade so what are we doing this for when other NATO countries appear to have scrapped their airforces. Political madness, but by who?
The UK has over 200 fighter jets.
if the RAF are struggling to patrol the small island of Britain with that fleet, then their problems are far greater than sparing 4 to the Baltic can ameliorate.
If it rained would it affect the electronics inside? Or partially flood the cockpit?
I hope that’s a joke…..
That’s it shell out more money to do another countries job
It’s NATO.
Do try and undertsand how our defence policy works and how we are a key partner in NATO. Its our forward defence posture here as much as it helps the Baltic states. The costs are effectively paid anyway whether the ac are at Lossiemouth or the Baltic!
Other NATO countries need to start pulling its weight and spend their TAX dollars.
As a member of NATO we have agreed to defend each other and part of that is a show of force, to try and avoid the appeasement that happened before the 2nd world war. So whilst it would be better if the smaller NATO countries that border Russia spent more on defense, our commitment should not be based on this. It’s 4 planes, which is frankly no where near enough, but I am proud that we aren’t just leaving it to the other countries and that we are showing our European cousins that we are there for them. I suspect… Read more »
Totally agree with your comments but maybe India could have considered the $1 Billion+ we give them in aid each year when they decided which fighter aircraft to buy. We seem to give countries like India (who manage a massive military force and nuclear weapons) a substantial amount of aid that they then spend on Russian or French aircraft.
Absolutely. I don’t get the “That’s it shell out more money to do another countries job”. Maybe I should stop shelling out more money to pay for other people’s houses being burgled or damaged. I’ll be pretty glad I paid my insurance premiums if my house gets burned down though.
I agree that certain other countries could and should do more but the country that has the biggest right to complain about how much it spends on keeping other people safe is the USA.
I don’t know why we give aid to India, but when you consider it is a country of almost 1.3 billion people, with a lot of poverty, that was at least partially caused by the empire, I think it’s hard to say it is not partially justified. I read we were going to stop it last year, so i guess it is a non-issue now anyway. However, even if these countries didn’t give us investment/trade in return, I think we have a moral duty to protect them, if we can. Especially considering we really don’t want another Soviet union being… Read more »
Remembering when their were questions being asked about how useful the typhoon would be when it came in to service with people questioning why we needed an interceptor/dog fighter.
I bet there’s a few people out there who are glad we stuck with it as its a fine weapon platform for this job.
Whilst your right, I doubt that Russia is overly concerned by 4 typhoons, they could very easily overrun them by a swarm attack.
We stopped giving aid to India at the end of 2015.