On Dec. 8, two Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16s based at Malbork in Poland to provide NATO Baltic Air Policing duties intercepted and escorted two Russian Air Force Su-34 Fullback bombers flying in international airspace.
The two Su-34s, which hadn't filed flight plans, were traveling southbound to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave, located between Poland and Lithuania and site of of Russian military airfields.
According to the Dutch Ministry of Defense, it was the second interception by Dutch F-16s since the RNlAF planes were detached to Poland on Sept. 3. The first scramble took place on Nov. 12 when the quick reaction alert (QRA) jets shadowed a four-engine Ilyushin transport aircraft flying north of Estonia and Lithuania.
Su-34s are becoming frequent visitors to the airspaces of northern Europe.
The first photos showing Russian Air Force Fullback warplanes in the Baltics were taken last month by RNoAF F-16s on QRA at Bodo airbase. More recently, the Royal Norwegian Air Force has released a heads-up display video showing aggressive Russian flying by a Mig-31 escorting two Su-34s at the end of October off Finmark.
As NATO has highlighted, Russian activities in the Baltics have surged in 2014: since the beginning of the year, NATO planes were scrambled to identify and escort Russian aircraft more than 100 times, three times the number as in 2013.
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