RAF halts surveillance flights over Black Sea after Russian warplanes fly ‘dangerously’ close to British aircraft in ‘Crazy Ivan’ incident

RAF surveillance flights over the Black Sea appear to have been suspended after Russian warplanes flew in ‘dangerous’ proximity to a British spy plane last month.

Publicly available flight tracking data reveals that no RAF Rivet Joint Surveillance aircraft have flown over the area since 21 April.

This comes despite Defense Secretary John Healey vowing last month that the UK would not be deterred by ‘dangerous and unacceptable behavior by Russian pilots towards an unarmed aircraft operating in international airspace’.

The Ministry of Defense (MoD) last week revealed that a Russian SU-35 fighter jet flew so close to an unarmed RAF Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft in international airspace over the Black Sea that it triggered its emergency systems and disabled its autopilot.

And an SU-27 jet made six passes, coming within 5 meters of the nose of the RAF aircraft.

Now open source flight tracking data shows that for the past five weeks, no Rivet Joint spy planes, normally with a crew of up to 30 people, have returned to the Black Sea.

RAF spy planes do not routinely switch off their transponders when in international airspace and can therefore be publicly tracked on the basis that Britain wants the Russians to know it is tracking them, military sources told the Mail on Sunday.

Sources added that Rivet Joints would normally visit the area twice a week.

On Saturday night, Tim Ripley, an analyst for the Defense Eye website, said the apparent suspension of spy flights showed the RAF was taking the latest Russian threat to its aircraft seriously, given that a Russian pilot said to be a ‘rogue’ tried to shoot down the Rivet Link in September 2022.

Mr Ripley said: ‘I think Moscow’s action shows that they made an assumption that these flights were helping the Ukrainians and they were clearly concerned.

‘But the RAF needs to take these seriously, because in 2022 we saw a Russian fighter jet fire two missiles at the Rivet Link but both missed.

‘It was later claimed that this was a malfunction, but this is unlikely.’

The Ministry of Defense insisted on Saturday night that ‘we are working with NATO allies on surveillance flights, but we will not assist our adversaries by commenting in detail on surveillance flights’.

But a spokesman echoed Mr Healey’s defiant response to Russia’s intervention last month, saying: ‘This latest incident has not deterred the UK’s determination to defend NATO, our allies and our interests against Russian aggression.’