Ukraine

[Kevin Farnell]

From FR24, I'm currently seeing 2 x KC-135's (one holding over Poland and another over northern Romania), whilst a third is over Germany, heading east from Mildenhall. As well as this, the A330 Voyager is still holding over Poland. All of these are tanker aircraft. I saw the Voyager appear to refuel a Typhoon, before the Typhoon vanished from FR24. The KC-135's use the 'flying boom' refuelling method, mostly used by the USAF, whist the RAF and most other Air Forces use the 'hose and drogue' system. I'm curious as to what these tankers are waiting for, so close to the Ukrainian border.

Kevin

[TSR2]

It will be air patrol Kevin. There will be others up there that don’t show up. There’s NATO surveillance aircraft operating and the little jets will be there as protection. The refuellers are there to keep them airborne as in that role I understand they wouldn’t normally carry external fuel tanks

[Kevin Farnell]

Thanks, Ben.

I'm aware that we've been carrying out air patrols over eastern Europe, but there must be a lot going on. I've found another KC-135 heading east from Zweibrucken and another heading back to Mildenhall from Bosnia.

Kevin

[Kevin Farnell]

Thanks, Ben.

I'm aware that we've been carrying out air patrols over eastern Europe, but there must be a lot going on. I've found another KC-135 heading east from Zweibrucken and another heading back to Mildenhall from Romania.

Kevin

[TSR2]

The other thing is there are a lot of freight movements at the moment. They won’t want these necessarily refuelling on the ground close to the border so it’s a drop and get away.

[Paul K]

I hope you will apologise immediately for your recent post , Paul K.

You can hope all you like, cstorey.

[TSR2]

Hi Kevin, there have been several C17 movements from Brize to Estonia and there was a A330 doing a refuelling run over Tartu earlier. I’ve also noticed the A330 from Akritori has been up over Bulgaria with a couple of the Typhoons too.

[Kevin Farnell]

Over the last couple of weeks, I've noted two Air Tanker A330's operate from Birmingham (BHX) to Warsaw (WAW). Strange that they position to BHX from Brize Norton (BZZ), which is just a short journey, to operate the flight (the aircraft are on civil registrations).

Kevin

[TSR2]

Those Airtanker aircraft on the civil register are just wet lease aircraft that are effectively kept in reserve. They can be militarised in short order. Most of the time they are chartered out to civil airlines and I’m pretty sure they’re crewed or operated by Titan on behalf of AirTanker. They’ve done all sorts of charters over the years from bucket and spade, to Lapland and everything in between.

[Nigel H-J]

I see that Russia, after Aeroflot being banned from landing in Britain, has now banned BA as a response to 'Unfriendly decisions by the UK aviation authorities'. Well, what do you make of that, as far as I am concerned it will not do much harm to us or BA.

I have been looking at the map of European Countries surrounding Ukraine and one in particular which still belongs to Russia - Kaliningrad lies on the Baltic Coast and Russia was allowed to keep it after victory over Germany in 1945, the German population was expelled. Presently Poland and Lithuania (who are members of Nato) border Kaliningrad and this means that Russia cannot directly go there overland and from reading there has been friction particularly with Lithuania due to this.

Another point is that Kaliningrad is also home to the Russian Fleet at Baltiysk. Now where does that leave Putin? He will not want to lose this important area and port as it remains ice free all year round and houses the Russian Fleet and is extremely important to Russia. Lithuania is part of Nato but Putin has said that one of his demands is that Nato remove all hardware away from the Russian borders. Yeah right, so he can one night sneak his military across into Lithuania and reclaim it as it was once part of Russia so therefore gives Russia complete over-land access to Kalingrad!!

Regards
Nigel.