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“Libé” was able to board an Atlantique 2 on Monday for a surveillance mission for the benefit of NATO. A mixture of rusticity and high technology, the patrol plane identified around ten Russian military vessels, including submarines.
From the crate that floats between two waters to the container ship, including boats and warships, nothing escapes the beam of the Atlantic 2 radar which sweeps the surface of the Baltic. Departing at dawn from the Lann Bihoué naval air base, near Lorient, the fifteen members of the French Navy crew have the mission, this Monday, to comb through two-thirds of this semi-enclosed and highly strategic sea which stretches from Denmark to Saint Petersburg, an area equivalent to half of France. The 14 tonnes of fuel taken on board at the Nordholz base, in the far north of Germany, should allow the large pelican, 31 meters long, 11 high and 37 wide, to patrol for five or six hours. before returning home.
Just behind the pilots and the on-board mechanic, lined up facing the blind wall of the cabin full of dials, the operators of the 21F flotilla, in sand-colored flight suits, work tirelessly, manipulating a multitude of dials and buttons. , joysticks, keyboards, in a constant bath of radio communications. The radar operator tracks unidentified objects, boats which have cut off their automatic identification system (AIS), whose position is incorrect
