Eastern Black Sea SIGINT mission

This afternoon, from 12:00 CEST to 16:30, a new SIGINT mission was carried out by a US Navy Boeing P-8A. The aircraft, which took off from NAS Sigonella, conducted a mission that extended to the eastern part of the Black Sea. The flight path in this area was not precisely tracked, but the aircraft appears to have flown off the coast of Sochi and Novorossiysk, which hosted most of the Black Sea Fleet units (later relocated farther due to Ukrainian attacks).

It has been months since we’ve seen USAF drones operating over the Black Sea, but recently, RC-135 and P-8 missions in the area have been becoming more frequent.