In the cockpit of a French Air Force carrier, one expects to be intercepted. The plane has just crossed the border of Estonia and is acting as a target within the framework of an exercise. The commander has also spotted the approaching French fighter planes: “No radio contact.. They are approximately 1000m away. OK, I have visual. They are slightly level below and I see the leader.”
>> 37th day of war in Ukraine: follow our live
From Friday April 1, France will take over NATO’s “sky police” over the Baltic countries for the protection of the airspace of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, awhile the war in Ukraine is still going on. A four-month mission for French fighters, tasked with intercepting any intruders in or near Baltic airspace, which rely on aircraft I’Atlantic Alliance to protect them from the Russians.
For the exercise in the Estonian sky, two Mirage 2000-5F flank the transporter a few tens of meters away. Departure airport, nationality, flight plan, essentials are checked. As for the leader, who is the patrol chief of this sky police, it is Captain Marvin. He has just landed his Mirage on the base of Ämari, in Estonia “Our main role is the visual identification of aircraft that have violated the rules of international aeronauticssays Captain Marvin. It’s a sky police mission that we did two years ago.”
Nothing particular a priori in this exercise of control, except that France takes over from Belgium and that over the last four months, Belgian pilots have seen an increase in Russian overflights. “Most of our responses were indeed for military traffic of Russian originsays Major Pierre-Yves Ivert, who commanded the Belgian detachment. Over four months, we carried out around thirty alerts. An activity three times more intense than what we have known in previous years.
His French counterpart, Commander Hubert, who now commands the four Mirage 2000-5F from BA 116 in Luxeuil-les-Bains (Haut-Saône) assigned to this sky police, anticipates the same number of alerts for the weeks to come: “As long as the context does not change, we can expect about the same rate. As we are the main nation from today, it will turn a little more towards us.” The “enhanced air policing” (eAP) operation is due to last until August 1.
For the Estonians as for the other Baltic countries, Russia remains a very serious military threat. General Rauno Sirk commands the very small Estonian air force which, with four aircraft in all, would be quite incapable of fulfilling an air police mission. “Russia is historically a threat to us, explains the Estonian general. We don’t know what it could do but we feel safe. We are part of NATO and the European Union and that’s the best deterrent against the Russians.” Beyond policing the skies, France and its allies therefore also operate a deterrent mission in the Baltic countries.