On Wednesday, France, for the first time, sent a pair of Rafale fighter aircraft, the most advanced combat warplanes in the Armée de L’air et de L’espace inventory, on a provocative patrol the length of the Black Sea and approaching Kremlin-controlled airspace over the Crimea peninsula and Russia’s Krasnodar region.
The Dassault Rafale is a fourth generation plus twin-engine fighter designed for air-to-air combat, ground attack, and reconnaissance missions. According to open-source flight tracking data reviewed by Kyiv Post, the Thursday mission by the two French fighters with tail markers FAF4220 and FAF4221 was the first time that aircraft flew a long-range reconnaissance mission as part of increasingly aggressive NATO air reconnaissance operations over the Black Sea at the edge of Kremlin-controlled airspace.
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The two Rafale B jets, in a mission lasting more than six hours, flew some 800 kilometers (497 miles) one way over open water, passing some 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of the Crimea peninsula and reaching a point within 170 kilometers (106 miles) of Novorossiysk and Sochi, in Russia’s Krasnodar region, before reversing course to Bulgaria, FlightRadar data reviewed by Kyiv Post showed.
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It was the first documented flight by Rafales flying that distance out over the Black Sea. According to open-source flight tracking data, the last time the French Air Force deployed Rafale fighters for flight operations in the region was on Jan. 23, but during that mission the Rafales stayed over land and maintained more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Russia-occupied Crimea.
The French warplanes on Wednesday stayed in international airspace and no encounters with Russian Air Force interceptors or ground defenses were made public. Russian military aircraft almost always fly without trackers turned on. NATO aircraft operating near Russia-controlled airspace usually switch their trackers on, but not always.
During the Wednesday Rafale mission, flight tracking platforms showed an unidentified military aircraft loitering in airspace over southeast Romania, flying at speeds and altitudes typical for a long-range reconnaissance aircraft. The Ukrainian military information platform Krymsky Veter, citing local air traffic sources, said that plane was a French Air Force AWACS airborne radar platform.
An advanced four-engine aerial surveillance plane designed to detect anything that flies in airspace hundreds of kilometers away, AWACS, when operated by NATO over the Black Sea waters, are almost always Luxembourg-flagged. The presence of a France-flagged AWACS on NATO’s southeast frontier is at least rare and possibly unprecedented; Kyiv Post researchers found no confirmed appearances registered in open sources over the past six months. A Luxembourg-flagged AWACS was shown circling over southeast Romania on Thursday.
NATO air elements had flown the Wednesday route followed by the Rafales in the past, but only infrequently. French Air Force patrols using older Mirage 2000 fighter jets launched from Romania on Feb. 24 flew a flight track through international airspace most of the length of the Black Sea, approximating the route taken by the Rafales.
According to some news reports at the time, at least one of the Mirages had been fitted with an ASTAC electronics pod designed to detect the locations of air defense radars ashore. In a possibly linked incident, Ukrainian kamikaze drones hammered an air defense site and two oil refineries in southwest Russia less than twelve hours after the French Mirages exited Black Sea airspace.
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) has been the most active Atlantic Alliance operator of combat aircraft over the western Black Sea. An RAF aerial reconnaissance operation in that airspace, taking place on Feb. 12 and visible to civilian air trackers, combined a Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint electronic eavesdropping aircraft flown from Waddington, Great Britain, to about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Crimea, escorted by a pair of RAF Eurofighter Typhoon FGR.4 fighters launched from Romania.
Russian state media and milbloggers have long accused NATO of sending surveillance planes escorted by combat aircraft to the edge of Russia-controlled airspace to find targets for Ukrainian long-range drones. Atlantic Alliance spokespersons have said NATO shares defense-related information with Ukraine but have not confirmed launching dedicated reconnaissance missions to find targets in Russia and Russia-occupied Crimea for Ukrainian drones to hit.
In the past week, Ukrainian long-range drones have hit multiple targets in Russia repeatedly, but aside from an oil refinery near the southwestern city of Rostov (hit on March 9 and 11), all were in central Russia and not close to the Black Sea and routes flown by NATO aircraft there.
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