Russian Fighter Jet Comes Within 10 Feet Of U.S. Plane Over Black Sea

In the latest of a long list of close encounters, a Russian fighter reportedly barely missed a large U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea in international airspace on May 30. Military officials broke the news about the incident on Thursday.

ABC News reports that there were two intercepts involving Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jets. The jet in the first incident came “dangerously close” to the U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft. It first came behind the U.S. plane, then underneath, and finally passed on the right.

Pentagon Spokesman Col. Steve Warren called it “an unsafe intercept.”

“The reason is concerns us is that these unsafe intercepts can lead to accidents and potentially tragedy or miscalculations of some sort and that is not what we want to see.”

According to CNN, the Russian jet came within 10 feet of the reconnaissance plane. U.S. authorities declined to speculate on whether the move was an intentionally dangerous, explaining that it might have just been a “lack of training” on the part of the Russian pilot. The jet was reportedly unarmed.

The U.S. filed an official complaint to the Russians, who denied any wrongdoing.

Nevertheless, the close call is just one of many encounters over the Black Sea and in the Baltic region. In what the Economist called a “pattern of provocation,” NATO planes carried out 400 intercepts in 2014, four times as many as in 2013.

There have also been two near misses between Russian military aircraft and Swedish planes — which have no way of detecting incoming jets. Russian fighters don’t file flight plans and fly with their transponders turned off.

U.S. officials explained that since there are now more NATO and Russian aircraft patrolling the Black Sea and Baltic regions, there are naturally more encounters. Many claim that Russia is testing the air defenses of the Western countries, a behavior not seen since the Cold War.

The new aggression has prompted new policy positions for those countries close Russia. Finland, for example, is now exploring NATO membership for security, according to Newsweek. The small Nordic country has its own military hardware and soldiers to add to the collective security agreement, and their membership would remove the ambiguity about Western obligations if the country were ever hit with a variant of Russia’s “hybrid warfare.”

Nevertheless, the Finnish public is still wary. Sweden also is not a member.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the Baltic States — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — are members of NATO and have asked for more permanent troops to prevent what happened in Ukraine from coming to their own borders.

The U.S. military also released rare footage of a Russian fight jet coming close to the USS Ross in the Black Sea (see below).

[Image Credit: Toshiro Aoki/ Wikimedia Commons]