Military from various countries, including from Portugal, are helping the Atlantic Alliance in the flank surveillance
After slowly heading to the Geilenkirchen Nato Air Base track in Germany, pilots accelerate deeply and the Sentry E-3 Surveillance plane, shouts as they gain speed and take off on the way to East Europe.
After NATO Airspace and Airplanes, the Alliance is reinforcing its presence in Eastern Europe to counteract Russia’s threat.
The NATO’s name for this is Eastern Sentry (Sentinel of the East in Portuguese).
The crew consisted of military personnel from various NATO countries, including the United States, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Romania and Turkey.
“These missions are very important to us,” says Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Wahnon of the US Air Force. “When we are patrolling these borders, they are our borders. So it is very important for us to be here to defend them.”
Legend
E-3 flew over the Polish airspace, monitoring the planes about the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, but also on Belarus and the Baltic Sea. Although there were some Russian military aircraft flying in these areas, they were all routine flights within Russian and Belarusian airspace.
However, the NATO has watched an increase in what the alliance calls Russian provocation actions.
On September 9, about 20 Russian drones towards Poland, which caused jets from various NATO countries to take off and slaughter them. Russia claims that it has not deliberately sent its drones to Poland, suggesting that Ukrainian electronic interference may have caused the route to deviate.
Days later, on September 13, Russian drones violated Romanian airspace, which led Bucharest to send combat planes.
In the same month, NATO says they fell over Estonia for 12 minutes, an eternity for combat aircraft, before being intercepted by nearby born aircraft. Russia replies that its fighters have never crossed NATO’s airspace, but the alliance says it has data proving the statement.
More recently, drones disturbed air trips in Denmark and was also detected near military facilities. The Danish authorities failed to conclude who he was responsible for what they described as a “hybrid attack,” although first minister Mette Frederiksen suggested that it could be Moscow.
A Geilenkirchen surveillance plane was near when the incident occurred in Estonia, explains a NATO spokesman to CNN. The alliance is now increasing the number of missions of these planes as tensions between Russia and the West increase.
“We are part of a long chain of command and control. Therefore, our main task is to detect it, follow, identify and communicate it,” says Wahnon.
E-3 has a giant rotary radar antenna mounted on your fuselage. It allows operators to locate aircraft up to 650 kilometers away if they are flying high. Lower -flying objects can be detected at a distance of about 400 kilometers, but the airplane sensors also mark land vehicles and vessels at sea far beyond NATO borders.
Surveillance controllers, such as Captain Jacob Anderson from the US Air Force, face fighters that potentially move toward the NATO borders as “tracks of interest”, which can trigger other actions by the E-3 flight crew.
“At that time, not only my surveillance sections, but also the crew as a whole, they talk about removing this trail of interest so that other actors, such as national actors, may might lap it and intercepting it, if necessary,” Anderson explains while looking at the computer screen that shows hundreds of planes to move through eastern Europe.
If the NATO decides to intercep Russian or others aircraft, the E-3 crew also acts as a battle space manager, guiding the alliance interceptors to their targets.
To do all this, the plane has to stay in the air for a long time.
A member of the E-3 crew is preparing for a four-hour surveillance (Claudia Otto/AP)
Although the mission in which CNN has been involved lasted eight hours, on other occasions flights can last more than 15 hours. Therefore, pilots have to be competent in AR-AR refueling, a difficult task with a plane the size of an airplane like E-3.
CNN was in the cockpit when the E-3 received gas from a refueling plane that also flying over the Polish airspace. As he approached the tank plane, the surveillance plane had to fly through the fighter treadmill and the turbulence caused it to shake violently as it approached.
“At first it is very difficult. Even just to overcome the fear of ‘we are approaching two to three meters of that plane,'” explains US Air Force Major Jason Sanchez, one of the pilots.
“Essentially, energy management, lateral management and the guarantee that we feel good and comfortable in our closure from a given position,” they are all involved.
The crew has also practiced flight and “touch and go” firing exercises upon Geilenkirchen’s base – preparing for any potential emergency in missions that the leadership of the defensive alliance says they are fundamental to dissuading Russia.
“Russia’s recklessness in the air throughout our eastern flank is increasing frequency,” Nato Secretary Mark Rutte recently said. “Eastern will add flexibility and strength to our posture.”
