Controversy Over Russian Fighter Jet Interception of UK Reconnaissance Plane

TEHRAN (Defapress) - The UK Ministry of Defence has announced that a Royal Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance and intelligence plane was intercepted several times by Russian fighter jets while carrying out a mission over the Black Sea in a “dangerous and unprofessional” manner.

According to a statement from London, the plane was carrying out a routine intelligence mission in international airspace when a Russian Su-35 fighter jet came so close to it that the UK plane’s emergency systems were activated and its autopilot system was deactivated. At another stage, a Su-27 fighter jet passed in front of the UK plane six times, at the closest distance it was only about six meters from its nose.

Images released by the UK Ministry of Defense show that the Russian fighter jet was apparently equipped with Kh-31 anti-ship missiles, weapons that are not usually used in air interception missions, which has increased the sensitivity of the incident.

London considered the action an example of Russia’s “aggressive and destabilizing behavior” in Eastern Europe and the Arctic, emphasizing that such behavior increases the risk of an incident and an escalation of tensions.

This is not the first dangerous confrontation between UK intelligence aircraft and Russian fighters. In 2022, a Russian fighter jet also fired an air-to-air missile near a UK RC-135 over the Black Sea, an incident that caused UK intelligence aircraft to fly escorted by Typhoon fighters for a while.

The UK Ministry of Defense believes that the Russian action was likely related to recent revelations by London about the activity of Russian submarines near critical naval infrastructure in the Atlantic Ocean.