I was onboard RAF’s response to Putin’s drone attack and one thing surprised me | UK | News
In response to Vladimir Putin’s drone attacks in the country, the Raf began air defense tasks on Poland and I was lucky enough to be invited. Defense Secretary John Healey announced that Britain would support NATO’s eastern wing in response to the reckless behavior of Russia, and the Raf Typhoons flies the first air defense question on Friday night.
The mission came only a few hours after the Russian jets were seized in Estonia’s airspace, which is a movement that increases the importance of the next task. As I did many times during my previous career, I arrived at the Raf Brize Norton in the afternoon on Friday afternoon – but this time he felt different. This feeling did not come because I was no longer the information that I would go down and land from the same place.
I felt different because on every occasion, since I passed through the air base, I never felt that I was deploying a significant danger, or if I were honest, I was doing something with such a serious geo-political results due to lack of operational distribution in the British Army during my eight years.
This time it made it feel different, because the task I diverted was ordered directly at the highest government level in response to the actions of the Russian dictator, and undoubtedly it would be watched from the Kremlin.
The shelf Voyager, which I would be on it, would have fuel supply of jets that would fly to have a real strategic impact on the limit of the world’s greatest military alliance so far.
They could be tasked with the missiles, which were equipped with missiles, to “patrol the Poland sky against the air threats from Russia, including drones,”, that is, to seize anything initiated from Russia.
Even if this is an unexpected possibility, it felt important to witness Britain’s reaction to Putin in the midst of global tensions.
During the flight, I had the opportunity to talk to the crew, speeches that cannot be reported for operational reasons.
But the tone of these conversations surprised me even if it wasn’t shock. He sat in a cockpit less than 100 miles from the Russian territory, and the realistic expectation of gravity and armed conflict with an enemy of a peer could be weighed on them – but if there was anything, the opposite was true.
As a soldier spent in the post -Afghanistan period, serious operational deployments were more and more, but of course the tasks on places such as Iraq, Syria, Africa and Israel were a permanent reality; Like the defense of the eastern border of NATO, which is routinely followed by alliance members.
According to them, a task is a task and they are determined to do it the best of their abilities.
While the discourse of politicians, the media and the general people were generally hyperbolic and sensational, the mood was cool, calm and gathered in the cockpit that distributed 27.4 tons of fuel to Raf Voyager’s 14 hunter jet.
Although most of the things I saw could not be reported, I landed exactly everything that Putin could try to provoke and test the NATO alliance in the early hours of Saturday morning, and the border was a safer place for the presence of distinguished men and women serving in the air force of our country.
