United States Government Vows To Protest Russian Intercept of Reconnaissance Plane
Last week, while an American reconnaissance plane was flying in international airspace north of Poland, it was intercepted by Russian fighter jet over the Baltic Sea. U.S. officials claim that a Russian SU-27 fighter intercepted the U.S. RC-135U plane at a very high rate of speed from behind, and then conducted two additional passes using “unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers” and getting far too close for comfort. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the Russian jet might have even come as close as 20 feet to the U.S. plane, though this information is not yet substantiated.
A spokesperson from the Pentagon, Mark Wright, made a statement on Sunday saying the U.S. would be filing a complaint to Russia after the incident. However, according to several news reports, Russian officials claim that their pilot was not in the wrong. U.S. officials claim that their issue is not with the interception of the plane itself, but the unsafe procedures used to do so.
“Unprofessional air intercepts have the potential to cause harm to all aircrews involved. More importantly, the careless actions of a single pilot have the potential to escalate tensions between countries,” Wright said in a statement.
Reportedly, the intercept is just another example of increasingly hostile air operations by Russian forces against members of NATO in the middle of its continuing unrest in Ukraine. “The nature of Russian air activity is expanding west into Europe and becoming more aggressive,” chief Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said in a statement on Sunday.
