Turkish F-16s Deployed to Poland for NATO Operations near Russian Border
Air policing as NATO delicately phrases it. Somehow one suspects that if Russia were to fly Sukhoi Su-57s continuously near the U.S. Atlantic seaboard or over the Great Lakes the Pentagon’s concerns would not be assuaged by being assured the deployments were merely a matter of policing.
The patrols began at the Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania immediately after the nation was inducted into NATO in 2004. A decade latter NATO also deployed them to the Ämari Air Base in Estonia. Now Poland has been added to the growing list of NATO bases in nations bordering Russia’s northwest.