Russian Bear buzzes British aircraft carrier in Arctic

A Russian Tu-142 Bear F maritime patrol aircraft passed at low altitude and unnecessarily close to HMS Prince of Wales in the Norwegian Sea, dropping tens of sonobuoys in close proximity to the carrier before being intercepted and escorted away by two F-35B jets, the Ministry of Defence has said.

The incident, first reported by Politico from aboard the carrier, took place on the afternoon of 2 July, northwest of Norway, while the UK Carrier Strike Group was conducting flying operations. The Russian aircraft did not respond to UK attempts to contact it on international frequencies to ascertain its intentions and warn of the safety of flight risk involved in approaching a carrier during flying operations, and the F-35Bs, flown by pilots of 809 Naval Air Squadron, escorted the Bear until it left the area.

“While operating in the Norwegian Sea on Operation FIRECREST, the UK’s Carrier Strike Group was repeatedly approached by a Russian ‘Bear-F’ maritime patrol aircraft,” a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said. “The Bear-F passed at low altitude and unnecessarily close to HMS Prince of Wales and dropped a large number of sonobuoys in close proximity to the carrier. This activity was unsafe and unprofessional. The Russian aircraft was intercepted and escorted by two UK F-35 jets from HMS Prince of Wales until it left the area.”

Sonobuoys are expendable devices dropped into the sea that act as underwater listening posts, transmitting acoustic data back to the launching aircraft to detect and track submarines, and a large pattern laid close to a carrier group is consistent with an attempt to locate any submarine operating in company with it.

The Tu-142 is the maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine derivative of the Tu-95 Bear bomber, a four-engined turboprop flown by the Russian Navy from Northern Fleet bases on the Kola Peninsula, and its crews have shadowed NATO naval groups in the North Atlantic for decades. Intercepting the type is a familiar task for British fighters, though on this occasion the jets came from the deck of the carrier the aircraft was probing rather than from land bases.

The strike group is deployed under NATO command in the High North as part of the alliance’s Arctic Sentry framework, with its headquarters embarked in HMS Prince of Wales for Operation Firecrest, the deployment announced by the Prime Minister at the Munich Security Conference in February in response to increased Russian naval activity, with the government citing a 30 per cent rise in Russian vessels in UK waters over the past two years.

The group comprises the carrier, the Type 45 destroyer HMS Duncan, F-35 jets, Merlin and Wildcat helicopters, supported by the tanker RFA Tidespring, with more than 1,500 British personnel deployed, and her jets have flown air defence patrols over Iceland and the High North, the first time NATO air defence operations have been conducted from a European aircraft carrier.

Anti-submarine capability within the group rests mainly with the embarked Merlin helicopters, with the Royal Navy unable to assign a frigate to the deployment. The department placed the deployment within the UK’s wider contribution to NATO, which also includes British jets patrolling the skies over Romania, a battlegroup equipped with advanced drones in Estonia, and the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps held ready in the UK.

The intercept coincides with the UK taking command for the first time of the special forces element of NATO’s Allied Reaction Force, described by the department as the spearhead of the alliance’s rapid deployment forces, able to deploy anywhere in the world within days.

Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis, speaking to Politico aboard the carrier, was also asked whether the strike group is tracking the superyacht linked to Vladimir Putin that was reported last week to be moving along the Norwegian coast on its way back to Russia. He declined to say, telling the outlet: “We know where it is.” The Defence Secretary, a former Army officer, added that the vessel’s movement was another combat indicator, in his phrase, that the Russian president is under increasing pressure.