ORAC
20th Sep 2020, 07:34
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/raf-and-navy-goad-russia-with-ferret-missions-wvqxpcz5g
RAF and navy goad Russia with ‘ferret missions’
RAF fighters and Royal Navy warships have dramatically increased patrols around Russia’s borders and coasts in an unprecedented operation to put Moscow’s military on the defensive.
Twenty-eight RAF aircraft have been sent to Russia’s borders on the Black Sea and off the coast of the Kola peninsula in the Arctic since the last week of August, involving formations of as many as five British aircraft at a time. Typhoon fighters and Voyager refuelling tankers, as well as Sentinel, RC-135 and Sentry E-3 Awacs (airborne early warning and control system) spy planes, have joined the long-range missions.
We reported on the first flights by the Typhoons over Ukraine a fortnight ago, but defence sources and data from aircraft-tracking websites confirmed that the patrols over the Black Sea had since intensified. Other Typhoons flew more than 1,500 miles into the Arctic Circle for the first time to fly a patrol off Murmansk, which is home to Russia’s main submarine bases.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/996x590/image_eb89d35dddb87df14e03e2a65276b203e326188a.jpeg
This coincided with a cruise by the anti-submarine frigate HMS Sutherland into this sensitive region as part of a flotilla with US and Norwegian warships.
Last Wednesday the survey ship HMS Enterprise entered the Black Sea to allow it to join the operation, and yesterday the Ministry of Defence said 250 soldiers from the Colchester-based 16 Air Assault Brigade had parachuted into a landing zone in southern Ukraine last week to join a Nato exercise."
Andrew Brookes, a retired RAF wing commander and veteran of Cold War spy flights, said the new missions were a response to recent Russian actions, including the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and increasing Russian air force flights over the North Sea.
“We are telling [Vladimir] Putin we have given up talking about things — we are getting in his face,” he said. “This is a sign that we have finally stopped talking about responding and have started to do something in response. We are going into Russia’s back yard and standing up to their bullying.”
“The air and naval patrols drive the Russians bonkers,” said a military source. “They have been scrambling their fighters and putting ships and submarines to sea in response, allowing the RAF spy planes to hoover up intelligence on their radar transmissions and radio communications. In the Cold War these were called ‘ferret missions’, after the analogy of dropping a ferret down a rabbit hole and seeing what happens. It forces them to react to what we are doing, rather than the other way around.”
A senior intelligence source said the information gathered would help MoD experts “identify our adversaries’ vulnerabilities and seek to exploit them”.
RAF and navy goad Russia with ‘ferret missions’
RAF fighters and Royal Navy warships have dramatically increased patrols around Russia’s borders and coasts in an unprecedented operation to put Moscow’s military on the defensive.
Twenty-eight RAF aircraft have been sent to Russia’s borders on the Black Sea and off the coast of the Kola peninsula in the Arctic since the last week of August, involving formations of as many as five British aircraft at a time. Typhoon fighters and Voyager refuelling tankers, as well as Sentinel, RC-135 and Sentry E-3 Awacs (airborne early warning and control system) spy planes, have joined the long-range missions.
We reported on the first flights by the Typhoons over Ukraine a fortnight ago, but defence sources and data from aircraft-tracking websites confirmed that the patrols over the Black Sea had since intensified. Other Typhoons flew more than 1,500 miles into the Arctic Circle for the first time to fly a patrol off Murmansk, which is home to Russia’s main submarine bases.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/996x590/image_eb89d35dddb87df14e03e2a65276b203e326188a.jpeg
This coincided with a cruise by the anti-submarine frigate HMS Sutherland into this sensitive region as part of a flotilla with US and Norwegian warships.
Last Wednesday the survey ship HMS Enterprise entered the Black Sea to allow it to join the operation, and yesterday the Ministry of Defence said 250 soldiers from the Colchester-based 16 Air Assault Brigade had parachuted into a landing zone in southern Ukraine last week to join a Nato exercise."
Andrew Brookes, a retired RAF wing commander and veteran of Cold War spy flights, said the new missions were a response to recent Russian actions, including the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and increasing Russian air force flights over the North Sea.
“We are telling [Vladimir] Putin we have given up talking about things — we are getting in his face,” he said. “This is a sign that we have finally stopped talking about responding and have started to do something in response. We are going into Russia’s back yard and standing up to their bullying.”
“The air and naval patrols drive the Russians bonkers,” said a military source. “They have been scrambling their fighters and putting ships and submarines to sea in response, allowing the RAF spy planes to hoover up intelligence on their radar transmissions and radio communications. In the Cold War these were called ‘ferret missions’, after the analogy of dropping a ferret down a rabbit hole and seeing what happens. It forces them to react to what we are doing, rather than the other way around.”
A senior intelligence source said the information gathered would help MoD experts “identify our adversaries’ vulnerabilities and seek to exploit them”.