IAN GALLAGHER joins the RAF mission over Poland… At 25,000ft the Typhoon closed in to refuel. Then as it peeled away into the murk, our captain told its Top Gun pilot: ‘Happy hunting’

The pilot spoke in a tone of Folksy, as if he warned the holidaymakers to a remarkable turning point from the window.

“ Chaos 1 now pulls up on the left wing ‘he said.

It was the early morning yesterday morning, and our shelf voyager tanker and our transport plane, 25,000 ft to Poland, which is not far from the Russian border, saw the same ‘danger zone’ that saw that the Kremlin fell in a reckless attack last week.

Looking out of the window, we have seen a formless shape that proposed a encounter close to my mind, just beyond the strange flashing lights and Voyager’s 200FT wing.

But then his dark outlines revealed a silhouette top weapon pilot on a rack Typhoon fighter plane.

Another typhoon, chaos appeared after 2 seconds. They joined us for a ‘drink’ – they were less than 40FT to refuel supply.

An extraordinary show was Star Wars’ things. And since we watched the night sky, just ten minutes, it was instantly reassuring that these super family warplanes, which were equipped with missiles from infrared guided air to air, were surrounded by both sides.

Because if the world had been in a dark place before it started last week, the shadows have grown longer since then.

View unmanned Russian drones and eliminating bandit hunter jets in a rack voyager air from the rejected tanker

Indeed, when we got up from the Raf Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday at 20.30, we learned that Russian President Vladimir Putin had risen in the eastern wing of NATO and added an extra Frisson to our mission to support air defenses in the region.

The three Russian fighter planes flew only to neighboring Estonia to be chased by F-35 fighters.

In Putin’s hit list, Finland, who was threatened similar to Ukraine before the 2022 invasion, came.

All of this said that a minister has left England and his allies ‘closer than any time since the Second World War’.

And so we set out with a little fear. Tayfunlar from Raf Coningsby in Lincolnshire had the order of hitting unmanned Russian drones and throwing a bandit fighter plane, and to help Voyager do it – ‘Keeping them in a fight’.

Defense officials stressed that Raf is not looking for problems. On the contrary, the task was about acting like NATO’s eastern wing ‘sacrificing at the doors’.

Voyager’s cockpit was a quiet model. Together with two pilots and a mission systems officer (MSO), all three learned Sorti as they only did an educational exercise.

Short interactions with the upper weapons ended with library -like silence. By listening to the headset, you can hear your own pulse in your ear.

A rack Mission System operator commands the typhoon from a Voyager’s cockpit

‘Net contact’ came to the Tayfun pilots, a instruction, 88m (288FT) is approaching by dragging the fuel hortus behind Voyager’s wing, and shows that they are free to queue.

All this was done with routine indifference – I’m not talking about the skilled skill.

And it was easy to forget that it was in 439mph. Underneath, Polish towns shone like raised jewelry boxes.

Voyager is twice the size of a Lancaster bombardment aircraft, the largest plane in the shelf history and can make fuel supply at a rate of 5,000 liters per minute. Garage pumps give only 40 liters of fuel per minute.

With a transformed Airbus A330-200 aircraft, Voyager can carry more than 6,000 miles 291 soldiers.

Yesterday we were only 15 people on board, a small group of journalists and a crew, and I felt like a ghost plane.

When the fuel supply process was over, the crew turned 180 degrees and peeled into murmur.

Good wish to them, one of the Voyager pilots: ‘Happy hunting!’ He said.

The fuel supply was controlled by MSO, a rare cooling man sitting on the pilots with his back, and his face was illuminated in half dark with a glare of a screen bank.

It controls the formation of typhoon, tells them when it will interact and control fuel release.

Yesterday, it distributed 27.4 tons – it is possible for Voyager to feed another plane with 100,000 liters of fuel in the air – more than the amount of two large gasoline tankers.

Later, at the MSO galleys, coffee stopped in his hand and answered questions such as a neurosurgeon who spoke with his relatives.

In Poland, while watching a voyager racing track -shaped flight pattern, fighter planes poked the country’s borders.

They returned several times to refuel supply, and each connection in the clouds was carried out without the slightest disruption.

In another frightening movement on Friday, two Russian jets made a low transition above the Poland’s Petrobaltik Open Sea Production Facility in the Baltic.

Polish forces were warned because the security zone of the platform was violated.

After violating the Estonia airport on Friday, a Russian Mig-31 fighter aircraft was seen on the Baltic Sea

As the US -led efforts to stop the war in Ukraine have not come to anything, developments have increasingly shook European governments.

Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, together with other Baltic states, one day Russia decides to attack NATO is among the most likely goals.

Although the neighbor Poland is much larger, he feels vulnerable. All four countries are the loyal supporters of Ukraine.

Typhoons reported that they could not find anything important in our eight -hour question.

However, both the fighter and Voyager are waiting to play an important role in defending the eastern wing in the coming weeks and months.

When we touched Brize Norton, a defense official said, “Everyone will do this with a great sense of pride,” he said.