This reads cool and all, but I also can't help help but feel like it might not have been as much of a 'gotcha' as the text makes it out to be. Who knows what kind of information the Russians got from this episode. The closer the NATO response is to what would actually happen in a combat scenario, the more valuable such a provocation is to them, I suspect.
There is no place called 'Udem' in Germany. There is a place called Uden in the Netherlands. Close to it is the military Volkel Air Base. It has fighter jets and nuclear bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkel_Air_Base
If breathlessness was a writing style. Seriously tiring when every other paragraph is a soft trailer for action much later on.
Which, by the way, is all conjecture. Even if everything happened as described (citation needed), they have no idea what the Russians knew. For a piss-them-off mission like this, watching the response and playing dumb seems far wiser than reacting.
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[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 33.7 ms ] threadTo probably quote Terry Pratchett, at least it is proper-ganda.
Only once was an incursion to Turkish airspace. After a warning it was shot down. Never happened again.
You tell me what's the better strategy to deal with Russia.
If you give leeway to a bully, the bully's gonna keep on bullying.
But IMO NATO gets to do the same - get a better digital and radar signature from offending aircraft, monitor coms, spy on command chain, etc.
What actually happened:
- A group of 40 year old Russian interceptors flew just beyond the airspace border, to test NATO response times.
- NATO responded and revealed capabilities
- someone in Russian military R&D got new data to work with.
It literally happened again the following month. Is this an AI generated article or something?
Which, by the way, is all conjecture. Even if everything happened as described (citation needed), they have no idea what the Russians knew. For a piss-them-off mission like this, watching the response and playing dumb seems far wiser than reacting.