On August 11, NATO’s aerial surveillance and control system tracked an object over the Black Sea, heading from Crimea towards the alliance’s borders. Subsequently, the object was identified as a Russian military aircraft. This was announced on Thursday, August 13, by the block’s joint air command.
“On August 11, the NATO air surveillance and control system recorded steady air activity in the international airspace over the Black Sea <...> Jointly fighters from Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria were able to respond to an unidentified plane flying from Crimea to NATO territory <...> which was identified as a Russian military aircraft, ”the alliance said, specifying that the object was subsequently identified as a Russian military aircraft.
Routine measures were said to have been carried out in a professional manner “to protect the airspace of NATO allies.”
On August 8, an article by Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, was published, in which the expert claims that air interceptions involving American and Russian aircraft could lead to tragedy. In his opinion, it is unlikely that data from reconnaissance aircraft can be more useful than satellite images, so the American authorities should be more careful when going to “air collisions” that threaten with serious consequences.
On July 15, the US Air Force long-range reconnaissance drone flew for many hours near the Russian borders on the Black Sea, the Caucasus, as well as the Russian borders with Donbass.
The RQ-4A Global Hawk drone flew along the southern coast of Crimea, as well as the Krasnodar Territory, after which it entered the airspace of Georgia, where it conducted surveillance near the borders of Russia in the Caucasus, as well as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
On the way back, the drone continued its flight along the coast of the Kuban and Crimea.
In total, the drone was near the southern borders of Russia for about nine hours.