For the first time since the begin of the war in Ukraine, we have tracked a mission of a manned aircraft over the Black Sea.
In the past few days we have tracked several missions by US Navy Poseidons, but these always were carried out next into Romanian and Bulgarian FIR. In this case, however, we’ve tracking a mission over all the Black Sea, which has so far only been carried out by USAF and NATO drones.
It was an RAF Boeing RC-135W (reg. ZZ665) that remained in the area for about two hours, orbiting in the eastern part of its flight from where it was possible to monitor the Azov Sea.
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This is the same pilot who tried this a few nights ago over Murmansk area off shore. The pilot is pushing his luck getting this close to Russian shores. But I assume that he had a couple of fighters nearby as the tanker have all the time. Once in a while, we can see the tanker has a fighter escort when the transponder is on.
I would also assume that it is possible for many of these large aircraft to be flown remotely. It would not be prudent to risk a pilot/crew’s life by daring the Russians to fire upon them. I said long ago that the first plane shot down would not have a pilot but could claimed that it did and therefore causing NATO to open the flood gate.