“The last act before the shot itself”
After five hours of patrol off the coast of Sweden and the Baltic countries, no suspicious vessel was spotted. Around 3 p.m., darkness fell over the Baltic Sea but the intelligence mission continued. During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, while flying over international waters near the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, the Atlantic 2 was the victim of an electronic jamming attempt. Nothing unusual so far: for several months, Russian forces have been disrupting GPS signals in the Baltic, with their Tobol and Krasukha-S4 systems, installed in Kaliningrad. But, this time, the plane is also illuminated by a fire control radar, coming from a Russian S400 ground-to-air battery. According to the French army, it is one of the most advanced systems in Moscow’s arsenal.
“It’s the last act before the shot itself,” explains Xavier Tytelman, radar operator on board Atlantique 2 between 2005 and 2009. “It’s like having a red dot on your forehead,” adds the aeronautics specialist. . On board, it is not known whether the shot was fired. Faced with a real missile, the device has little chance of surviving. » The military therefore needs composure to gauge the threat, even if the probability that Russia will deliberately shoot down a NATO plane is very slim.
“Everything was calm,” remembers Guillaume Bonnet, an AFP reporter on board during the mission. No one told me anything. At one point I felt the guys were a little nervous but that’s all. » Around 4 a.m., on the return to Lorient, a soldier whispered in the journalist’s ear: “It’s not the smoothest flight we’ve had.” Guillaume Bonnet did not discover the details of the incident until the next day.
“Contained hostility”
On the staff side, we prefer to play down the incident. Such an initiative “is not exceptional in this area” and “means that Russia does not remain passive”, Colonel Guillaume Vernet, army spokesperson, explained to AFP. Russia thus “made known, in a contained manner, its hostility” but “the professional behavior of the (French) crew made it possible to avoid any escalation” further specifies Colonel Vernet.
-A strategic theater during the Cold War, the Baltic Sea is gradually becoming a space of hybrid confrontation again. With the accession of Finland and Sweden, this shallow sea is now referred to as a “NATO lake”. To compensate for a balance of power against it, Russia is waging a hybrid war including cyberattacks, sabotage, espionage, etc. “We are witnessing the strategic renewal of maritime theaters which have been dormant since the Cold War,” believes former Chief of Staff of the Navy Bernard Rogel. In the Black Sea as in the Baltic, however, we must neither allow ourselves to be intimidated by provocations nor react excessively. The rules of engagement remain clear. »
Swiss
