NATO Deploys F-35 Combat Aircraft to Baltic Sea for First Time
Buried in a routine report on Italy’s contribution to NATO’s Air Policing for the past 59 years is mention of Italian F-35s currently deployed to the Ämari Air Base in Estonia. That base as well as the Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania and now the Malbork Air Base in Poland are used for around-the-clock air patrols by NATO warplanes.
As far back as 2004 with the Lithuanian base, fighter jets from Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. have flown a variety of advanced multirole combat aircraft near Russia’s borders; Latvia, Lithuania and Poland all border both Russian territory and Belarus.
News From Antiwar.com
On June 29-30 NATO members and partners conducted air exercises over the Baltic Sea and the Baltic states. Twenty aircraft from NATO members Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey and NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner Finland participated in second iteration of the Ramstein Alloy exercise. The alliance gave its account of the event the headline of
As part of what appears to be designed to keep Russian radar and military observers on a 365-days-a-year alert in the region, coming as the drills did immediately on the heels of the large-scale Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) war games, the new exercise was conducted in conjunction with the NATO Air Policing mission based in the Ämari Air Base in Estonia which, with the Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania, has hosted regular rotations of multinational NATO combat aircraft for years, in the second case since 2004.