by Nat South for the Saker Blog
This week, in an interview with TASS, the head of the Russian Border Guard Service spoke about the increase in intelligence activities along the Russian sea borders.
“Seaward parts of Pacific and Arctic oceans, Baltic and Black Seas are increasingly becoming areas of intelligence[-gathering], naval exercises, in which foreign ships and aviation of several states are involved” Vladimir Kulishov, First Deputy Director of the FSB
In a 27 March 2020 Russian MoD briefing, it was stated that aerial reconnaissance missions had increased 20% since the start of 2020 and 80 flights were reported along Russian borders. Since 2014, there has been progressively more and more NATO reconnaissance near Russia’s borders. The Russian Ministry of Defence releases on a regular basis basic statistics on air intel-gathering missions and intercepts carried out. This data makes for an interest mini-research and data analysis project, along with an OSINT information gathering to get a richer picture of what is happening in the skies near to the borders of Russia. Let’s start with the data provided by the Russian MoD, which I collated and put together as a graph for 2019.
Figure 1. 2019 Numbers of air reconnaissance / intelligence-gathering missions along / near to Russian borders
What’s noticeable is the sustained frequency of air missions along Russian border that are tracked by Russian radars, (carried out by either NATO, United States, Sweden and quite possibly also Japan and others on the Arctic and Pacific side of Russia).
Generally speaking, the data is available usually weekly although there are periods where the data seems to be only given out fortnightly, (January for instance). No further information is provided so as to get a better context overall or more details on particular geographical hotspots. Yet, the Russian MoD used to do this a couple of years ago in their weekly infographics.
A total of 1181 missions and 434 intercepts were noted for 2019, with extreme variations in numbers during the year. The lowest record is of 9 missions, (although the ratio with intercept is high with 4 carried out). There is a marked peak at the beginning of October, with significant numbers reported: 42 violations and 27 intercepts, for that previous week.
The upward trend from mid-August to October matches up with the build-up and the holding of the largest military exercise in 2019 — “Tsentr 2019“. This large-scale exercise is noteworthy not only because of the sheer numbers involved, but the participation of China and six other countries. It remains to be seen how these mission/intercept figures are directly connected to this exercise, given the central geographical locations of where the Russian military exercise took place.
It isn’t known just how many of these air reconnaissance and intelligence gathering missions were linked to monitoring of regional or national scale military exercises. The Russian MoD stated that 4,000 military exercises of varying scale would be carried out in 2019. Sometimes, NATO air reconnaissance flights are connected to NATO air and naval exercises in the Baltic, Black and Barents Seas. However, more than often, it is just simply intelligence gathering mission per se.
The snippet of information released concerting NATO intercepts for 2019 paints a different picture to that of the Russian MoD. The numbers for NATO intercepts needed to be viewed differently, as they include intercepts and escorts of Russian military transport planes as well as bombers and fighters. To underline this point with an example is the following article and the video of when a NATO aircraft was moved away by a Russian fighter escort from a Russian airforce transport aircraft with the Minister of Defence onboard in August 2019. To note that the Russian plane were in international airspace in the Baltic region, transiting from Kaliningrad to Moscow. Again, this is a completely different situation to that of carrying aerial reconnaissance and intel-gathering missions on the ‘doorstep’ of Russian sovereign airspace.
All too often, this get muddled or misinterpreted by media outlets and pundits as being NATO airspace, when in fact it is an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) that goes beyond the 12MN sovereign airspace of a member country up to 200NM. Additionally, this buffer zone all too often conflated with labelled as “European airspace”, a play on words to make it sound scary to the layman viewers, listeners and readers. To reiterate, it is international airspace but it is controlled for Air Traffic Control reasons, (such as civilian traffic via the FIR) and as an ADIZ monitored by the military.
Intercepts and escorts are not uncommon and the data for 2019 shows this to be the case. NATO jets intercepted Russian planes flying close to NATO members’ airspace 290 times in 2019, according to an unmanned NATO official in a RFERL article. So, how many of those intercepts were routine transit military transport flights to and from Kaliningrad? That’s one way of fudging the figures to make the numbers I suppose.
Both sides accuse each of the unsafe and unprofessional interactions during some intercepts both in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, as highlighted by the latest incident in the Eastern Mediterranean this week. Yet, very few accounts provided by journalists do also show another side, one of professionalism.
Unfortunately, that aspect that is normally encountered, is all too often sidelined into obscurity, for blatant propaganda purposes, it seems better to continuously distort the situation, to hype and ceaselessly push an image to suit the wider narrative of “Russian aggression”. Yet, these hard to find insights actually provide a wider context and a better overview of the environment and dynamics of intercepts in general and importantly why tensions in the air can flare up. Without going into details, this article outlines the procedures for intercepts. Of interest is the section “post interception phase”.
Likewise, NATO also intercept Russian military flights in international airspace, as this example shows, of a TU-142 bomber with escorts back in August 2019. At this point, I’d like to comment on the wider aspect of this incident, in particular, the response by the Russian military to NATO flights of strategic bombers that particular year, as partially detailed here in an article on a number of B-52 flights carried out including in the Baltic. As I write this, I see that B1 bombers flew to the Baltic from Ellesworth AFB, (USA) last week and today one has flown to the Black Sea region. Footage of the Russian Air Force interception and escort was available the next day.
The duty Air Defence Forces in the Western and Southern military districts promptly revealed the actions of B-1B strategic bombers of the US Air Forces over the neutral waters of the Black and Baltic seas and conducted their escort by Russian fighters. https://t.co/Ef8kWkZ7OM pic.twitter.com/pCXLyh6VUa
— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) May 29, 2020
Essentially, Russian bomber flights are designed to probe NATO mainly by asserting a psychological demonstration of capability, rather than an overt military intelligence gathering mission, which is the mainstay of U.S. and NATO air operations in close proximity to Russian borders. Having said that, the B1 and B-52 are the flip side of the Russian bombers in terms of power posturing and each side take turns to carry out probing missions. In fact, USSTRATCOM call these missions Bomber Task Force (BTF), as part of showing global power to “provide overwhelming force anywhere, anytime in support of American interests or our Allies and partners.” An unusual B1 mission was carried out in the Pacific region, that went via the Bering Sea and along the Kamchatka coastline on 22 April. The Russian MoD took note and it was mentioned in their 1st of June briefing.
USAF B-1B HYPER21 executed a flight from Ellsworth AFB to Japan via the Bering Sea & North Pacific. The bomber worked with JASDF fighters near Misawa AB, then flew to a point near Okinawa before the return trip to Ellsworth AFB. pic.twitter.com/YhlcDaFAbM
— Aircraft Spots (@AircraftSpots) April 22, 2020
The main issue, though, is the type of mission carried out, the frequency and the geographical locations. All these also entail a certain of prior intelligence-gathering missions as well. I certainly would like to know more about the frequency and intensity of such U.S. missions, compared to the missions carried out by the Russian airforces counterparts. Here’s a glimpse: compare the statistics for the Russian intercepts above with that stated by NORAD in 2019: “NORAD has intercepted an average of approximately six to seven Russian sorties annually entering its ADIZ since Russia resumed long range aviation patrols in 2007.”
How close is being close to territorial airspace? A military can literally fly up the 12NM boundary, but this doesn’t happen very often. It boils down to attitudes, as NATO flights, especially the unmanned aircraft, tend to be closer and last longer than the Russian flights reconnaissance. A example of this that happened in the Black Sea last week is shown in this visual:
11:10 мск.
Приближался к береговой линии в районе Севастополя🇷🇺 на расстояние 33 км. pic.twitter.com/gHPtt10UGa— PlaneRadar (@ua4wiy_) May 26, 2020
It does beg the question, would NORAD and the USAF be so accommodating to this kind of flight path and duration on a regular basis, particularly if it was a Russian military aircraft as close as 33km off Florida or Alaska?
The Kaliningrad region gets put under an intense spotlight almost on a daily basis, as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3 below. NATO keeps a close scrutiny of this Russian territory, which is often cited in the media as being an ‘enclave’ or as Russia’s ‘outpost’ in the heart of NATO. It is the homeport of the Russian Navy Baltic Fleet with a permanent land and air military presence as well. Thus, any Russian military twitch is monitored, logged and analysed continuously by NATO personnel since Kaliningrad presents significantly more anxiety for NATO than Ukraine or Crimea, keeping alive the “Russian aggression” fable. Having Kaliningrad on NATO’s doorstep is a self perpetuating accomplishment, to not only by continuously forward deploying NATO units, but by substantially raising tensions from time to time by forward deploying U.S. strategic bombers to the area. 2019 was not exception to this rule, neither is 2020 so far, given recent B-52 and B1 flights.
Figure 2. April 2020 frequency of flights bordering to Russian borders. Data derived from social media aircraft tracking accounts. Graph: Nat South 2020
Figure 3 shows the different types of aircraft that carry out air reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering near and/or along the land and sea borders of Russia during the month of April.
“NATO’s military activity near our borders increases every year. The Alliance’s land and sea units are being built up. NATO membership is expanding. The US global missile defense system is being deployed.” Defence Minister Shoigu, 25 March 2020
In the latest Russian MoD briefing, (1st of June), further details on the situation of NATO, intelligence-gathering and intercepts during May was given in a briefing by General Rudskoy. Of particular interest is the comment about the issue over using transponders by military flights in the Baltics. Originally partially agreed by both NATO and Russia back in 2017, there are still some outstanding issues to be settled. General Rudskoy stated that: “We are counting on the readiness of the NATO countries to take concrete decisions on this issue”. Another issue was mentioned, one of distances during intercepts.
Details on the air missions and intercepts for May will be provided in another blog posting, that includes the recent NATO/ UK/USA naval activities in the Barents Sea.
These flights close to russian territory from us air force and us puppets are a show of force nothing more. But of course they do their part in destroying trust between the us and russia. Just like sanctions, groundless accusations from mains stream medias or fabricated cases (like skripal), these flights contribute to escalate tensions.
The us doesn t do that with russia only. Now they are doing the same things on iran and in the china sea. I don t see the whole picture so I don t really understand the us strategy in doing that. They may think that they will scare russia or china and force them to bow down. They may do that to show (especially to themselves) that they are strong in a sort of “feel good” operations. Or they may do that to force china and especially russia to increase their military expenditures hoping that by doing so russia will collapse just like the soviet union which was spending around 25% of its GDP in the 1980s to keep up with the us. The us withdrew from INF treaty and open skies treaty for the same reason.
If we look at the results this strategy doesn t seem very succesfull because during the last four years what the us really archieved is uniting their three mains targets (russia iran china) against themselves. I don t think this was the result they were expecting when they started their so called “freedom of navigation” operations and “maximum pressure” strategy on several countries at the same time.
Needless provocations in search of more sanctions. The US is in constant search of a crisis to provoke public outrage and justify further sanctions [At this point, is there anyone in the world who the US hasn’t sanctioned?] and military budget increases. A marketing ploy, if you will. The USAF is tailor-made for this role, as they haven’t been decisive in anything since Desert Storm. Great at spending $Billions on useless junk and enriching Lockheed Martin, though. Great “work” if you can find it, I hear.
Desperation by US and NATO to try to gather electronic profiles of the integrated air defense systems protecting the Russian Federation.
The planes and drones project nothing of power. They actually verify the powerlessness and fears of the enemies of Russia.
Unless the West brings swarms of drones and missiles, their planes will be decimated. First, there has to be many hundreds of missiles and drones swarming each installation of missile defenses. Then, maybe their planes can get through to damage the Russian nation.
However, with the flight of a single swarm, the launch sites and HQs of the commands that sends them will be turned to ashes by Russian missiles in a counter-strike.
The West (US and NATO) knows this outcome also.
So, these probes are fools errands. Meaningless, except to sharpen the Russian defenses.
It ain’t desperation, more likely window dressing “keeping up appearances”, in response to the “Russian aggression” fable that keeps being trotted out. And also the gigantic over bloated US defence budget needs to be justified. (sarc)
Did anyone actually appreciate reading this article or am I wasting my time doing this kind of long-winded research?
Sure there’s plenty to comment on this topic, but I get the impression of having contributed very little. The data, charts and infographic set the context for the situation and importantly show a big contrast to the yelps we get from NATO and the media everytime Russian Air force goes on a long distance mission.
I really appreciated your article. It gives us many informations and allows us to realise how far the us and nato are pushing their provocations. The riks of a misunderstading are real. Tensions are very high and they keep rising year after year.
If the reckless governments in the west do not change their behaviour soon, we are leading to something very bad.
I enjoyed it, thank you
Thank you all for the feedback it is welcomed. As Amarynth said, the project took a long time, I did it by myself, it was made harder by my weak Russian. At times, extremely frustrating, trying to feel my way through a topic that it isn’t my usual field. Trying to put the flights into a visual format was very difficult, I’m not a graphic designer.
Like a lot of things in my life, I get the impression that all of my projects, never mind any skills I used to have, go into a black hole. There isn’t a, day where I don’t feel like I am continuously nailing jelly to a wall.
Seeing the initial comments made feel that way, comments about the issue in general but nothing of value about the data or work itself. As much, I and others gain an insight from these comments, I felt that it is equally helpful to see feedback. After all, it is also a, learning process for me as well on how I write and present data and info. Especially as I would like to do a, follow up. If I see that the data or infographic isn’t of interest, then what’s the point of carrying on? I might as well start on something else more productive. I wanted to make to my point early enough so it didn’t get lost in comment threads later.
Lastly, I hope that the readers appreciate the enormity, dedication and work that not only goes into writing articles, researching and all of the back end work by volunteer content managers, moderators, all who spent considerable spare time to present you the website.
The article is fine, but there’s a limit to what data can tell you. I’m a data “analyst” – more of a data producer actually – by trade, so I see the impact of all the data I produce almost daily, and it isn’t much. Truth is, humans aren’t really “wired” (hate that term) to deal with too much data. We simply don’t have the brainpower or the inclination to make sense of it, even when it’s gussied up with nice charts and graphs. And as far as using it to refute propaganda? Not even. Propaganda works on a whole ‘nother emotional level, so documenting the US’s many transgressions in that regard will usually get you nada. Just ask Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton for that matter too about that.
A good example: I used to read the web site Naked Capitalism quite often, sometimes still do. This is a fairly mainstream economics and finance web site. They’ll occasionally post an actual economics paper from an actual economist with all the charts and graphs voodoo that they’re typically known for, to which they’ll usually get minimal reader comments in response, with the one’s that do cutting to the chase and discussing the macro policy or personal impacts or whatever of whatever the author was discussing.
On other days, like today as it turns out, they’ll post a Q&A discussion with Michael Hudson like this one: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/06/michael-hudson-feds-10-trillion-defends-assets-of-the-rich.html , to which the readership always eagerly responds. [Strangely, not too many comments on this one yet today, but by this time most of the readership reads Hudson so regularly they could write his columns themselves. I strongly recommend the article nonetheless.] Hudson is so smart and has such command of his subjects that charts, graphs, and more than a handful of statistics would actually get in his way. I think people generally respond much better to that approach, provided of course that the author is an expert in his field.
If it was me, I wouldn’t rely too much on data to make your points, especially if it’s an especially arduous task for you to do so. The payoff’s usually just not there.
Helas, this is what I realised, emotions get carried farther & wider than data. It was an interesting project because I had two opposing information sources to look. Also using OSINT to note flights was interesting, it feels like the tip of iceberg, many aren’t seen by avgeeks.
The data does show a glimpse into how much is put in by NATO to justify their reason d’être, window dressing.
I believe most of those are done to get the Russians to waste resources responding to them. In retaliation Russian aircraft should regularly patrol the US and “NATO” airspace.Make them waste resources,and rattle them that Russian aircraft are probing their borders.When the US and NATO complain about it as they almost certainly will.The Russians should just reply that they are only “returning all the visits they have gotten from US and NATO aircraft”.
Which what I said about the bombers in my article.
I think this will be the last time that I’ll do this kind of intensive research for the readers of this site.
Nick
NatSouth
I very much appreciated your report and analysis and wish you well, whether you post or go.
but i don’t see any reason for your iritation.
many thanks
Why? I think your article was good. It represents condensed information of what is happening. The problem is that “we the non military people” do not keep any track of such events. Your presentation gives us a horrible picture of what might happen, if … Lets think for a second. Each one of those events represents possibility of an attack against which Russia must take action. Russia could assume that each one of those events is “just provocation” but all you need is one real event ….
As it was said above, it’s forcing wear and tear of equipment and human resources not only a possibility of real event. Each one of those events puts the crews on the ground on alert just as it does to the active participants. Because, all we see is just two planes in the air, … It’s a classic war of attrition, although not a hot one, yet. And the eye in the space is watching the action on the ground feeding the info to “Jack Ryan”.
And also the issue of how this, data gets rehashed into scary stuff by the West media. The figures show a glaring inconsistency and puts holes into the pathetic narrative of the Russians, are too close to ‘our’ airspace.
If the average people was able to see the data between what NATO does almost on a daily basis and what is done as a response, they quickly see the scaremongering propaganda.
Russian MoD has been consistent with releasing the data for a, few years now. NATO on the other hand [. ].
If you’re talking about average Americans, believe me, your argument would fall on deaf ears no matter how much data-driven proof you produced. Americans are totally indifferent to it. Most of the rest of the world knows full well what’s going on, but they’re thus far powerless to do anything about it.
I’m ignoring the average US citizen, they aren’t even relevant IMHO.
Thanks for your efforts.
Who is spending the most resources for these kind of flights?
I would expect it is NATO. From what we saw in Syria, the Russians can service and turn around an aircraft much faster than NATO aircraft. I would expect this goes further to include bogus radar signals and other radio traffic.
You have convinced me that Kaliningrad is of far more interest for NATO than any other frontier for the time being.
Are the peaks in November and December just a coincidence in your mind versus the strangling of the Norstream2 pipeline project?
Great comments, in particular about the Nord Stream, although I’m not sure that is the case as Kaliningrad isn’t relevant commercially. Maybe exercises or simply the end of year, let’s spend the budget, I would have thought NATO is no exception to the rule. I tried to trawl through relevant exercises but I spent too much time.
The aspect of spending resources, it’s the USA of course that is ahead by miles, since most flights are USAF, few USN and many army flights in Kaliningrad area.
The article is very good and useful. But I cannot see the reason for the author’s reaction to comments. I’m sure most of us are not military experts, so we are all learning from the information provided.
Nat, perhaps I can say something. You were very clear on what is happening but personally I do not have the background in order to make a coherent comment. I do appreciate what you’ve done. Give it a little time, and perhaps people with more knowledge will come around. What is clear to me, is that this is a continual and increasing in frequency wargame and continual provocation, and not between allies. And also what I learned is to check very carefully what is meant by the term airspace. So, at least I figured out a thing or two. (So, you are educating – at least you are educating me).
It may be the same for other readers, that they simply do not know enough to make coherent comments – there has been +2,400 views, so folks are reading. With UNCLOS and the laws of the sea, I personally am much more able to say something that makes sense. With aircraft, I can only learn the few things that I can learn – having no basic background.
In addition, most people are glued to the riots/civil war/whatever it is, in the US.
In general, I’d like to point out that this is unique research. Nat pulled the information together and made the graphs and laboriously searched for the links in English. This represents perhaps more than a month’s research work in spare time.
I too appreciate the article Nat South.
Often articles that are informative, but not “clickbait” don’t get a lot of interaction. This is too detail-heavy to attract many trolls.
I would suggest an introduction and a conclusion would help make it easier to digest for more casual readers.
Unfortunately,I feel you need to develop a thicker skin. I don’t know why you were annoyed when the post was only up for a few hours
I guess that my thick skin vanished along with the temp job that I had last year.
Very helpful and constructive feedback. Thank you. Let me know if there’s a topic you’d like to know a little bit more on. More than happy to give people an insight
Wow! After that invite, I will jump in – with a humble request. Still on the topic of what is happening in the skies if this is a new direction for you. What about the detail about the Open Skies treaty. OK, we know that the US is collecting their toys and walking out of yet another treaty, but what is not so commonly known (and I have not had time to spend on this myself) is how this treaty fits in with the other arms control and non-proliferation treaties – all of which are now basically gone. How did the various actors actually fulfill their treaty obligations, what it is that is going to remain undone if this treaty goes bloohyfut! This is a huge subject for sure, but staying in the skies and the wonderful flying machines, what about that Open Skies treaty ? I’d love it if you put this one on your list.
I think on this topic I defer to advising you to check out the articles by Steffan Watkins, he’s the SME subject Matter expert on this.
Really not my cup of tea to wade in when someone else has been hawkeye on this for years. He’s on twitter too.
Aside, this fits into a wider and more disturbing pattern of throwing toys out of the pram – because China and China via Russia. I’ll touch upon this in my next post on Arctic military presence. Additionally its a old hack by Washington, what I came the circular reference syndrome, (excel error), to lay the blame on technicalities, created solely because they are almost unresolvable.
https://medium.com/@steffanwatkins/inside-the-u-s-senate-resolution-to-withdraw-from-the-open-skies-treaty-4cbad67f3981
Nat South
Well put together article. Quite clear who the aggressors are. Didn’t read your article till tonight. I don’t follow this site much like I used to and mostly comment here infrequently. Do you post your articles at other sites? I find your work useful.
Thank you very much, if just the 1 person takes the figures and quotes them in a debate on social media, then I know I’ve done my job. I run my own blog at LiveJournal, links on images above, mostly about dull maritime stuff, UNCLOS, ship tracking, deep-sea research, accidents etc and translations of really informative articles on Maidan… You are welcome to browse.
Hey thanks. I book marked your site now.