A powerful American reconnaissance aircraft was captured by flight tracking websites early Tuesday circling the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad before returning to an airport in eastern England. It appeared to be the second such recon mission undertaken by the aircraft this week.
The plane, an RC-135U Combat Sent, departed England’s Mildenhall airport at 7:04 a.m. local time before flying east over the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, flight data showed. It arrived above the Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland, where it made several tight loops offshore before returning to Mildenhall about six 1/2 hours later.
The flyover came amid escalating tensions between NATO members and Russia, which has repeatedly sent unmanned drones into the alliance’s airspace as part of what some military experts call “probing” measures to test the West’s defensive readiness. The Daily Express U.S. contacted the Air Force for further information on the Combat Sent’s recent activity.
According to the Air Force’s website, the RC-135U is one of only two in the U.S.’s inventory. The Boeing-produced craft “provides strategic electronic reconnaissance information to the president, secretary of defense, Department of Defense leaders, and theater commanders,” the website says.
Its purpose is to locate and identify “foreign military land, naval and airborne radar signals, the Combat Sent collects and minutely examines each system, providing strategic analysis for warfighters.”
Communications systems onboard the craft include high frequency, very high frequency and ultra high frequency radios. It also contains ground navigation radar, a solid-state Doppler system and an inertial navigation system merging celestial observations and GPS data, the Air Force says.
Because the RC-135U is equipped with an aerial refueling system, the plane effectively has an unlimited flight range. It is manned by two pilots, a navigator, two systems engineers, a minimum of 10 electronic warfare officers called “Ravens,” and at least six other specialists.
The plane, which operates under the JAKE37 callsign, flew from 25,000 to 35,000 feet as it moved eastward toward Kaliningrad on Tuesday morning. It descended to under 20,000 feet as it reached its destination, oscillating higher and lower over the next hour and 30 minutes as it circled the exclave before returning to England, flight data shows.
The craft made a nearly identical trip on Oct. 2.
Polish officials said that NATO fighter jets were scrambled in September to shoot down multiple Russian drones that crossed into the country’s airspace, one of an increasing number of violations by Russian aircraft during its ongoing war with Ukraine.
Ukrainian and other Western officials accused Russia of testing NATO’s air responses with the incursion, an admitted weak point in the alliance’s defensive array. Russian President Vladimir Putin “just keeps escalating, expanding his war, and testing the West,” said Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Andrii Sybiha.
Russian violations of NATO airspace have forced allied members to scramble fighter jets several times since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. September’s drone incident was the first time NATO jets destroyed Russian craft within allied airspace.
“This is more than a careless, navigation error from the Russians,” Mick Ryan, a former Australian general and strategist, wrote on social media after the incident on Sept. 10. “At least a dozen drones appear to have crossed into Poland.”
“It would be better described as ‘probing’ — in case NATO establishes bases in eastern Poland to support a future presence in Ukraine.”