RAF Typhoons have intercepted and shadowed two Russian military aircraft over the Baltic Sea.
The jets were scrambled from Amari Air base in Estonia yesterday after the planes approached Baltic airspace without sharing a flight plan.
They initially identified and shadowed an Il-20M "Coot" A surveillance aircraft, before checking out a an An-26 "Curl" transport plane flying north from Kaliningrad.
Four Typhoons were deployed to Amari on May 1, and are working with Norwegian aircraft to patrol Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
It is the latest incursion by the Russians, who have seen British fighter jets previously scrambled to shadow Russian long-range Bear bombers off the UK coastline.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who plans to visit the Baltic Air Policing detachment later this month, said: "The interception of Russian military aircraft by our RAF Typhoon fighters underlines our commitment to Nato and the security of the Baltic region.
"RAF air and ground crew are doing vital work to defend the skies above and around the Baltic States and I look forward to seeing that work first hand in the near future. "
Flight Lieutenant Paul Griffin said: "In this case the Typhoons were given the nod and the Estonian controllers hit the scramble button.
"The Estonian controllers picked up the aircraft on their radar picture and evaluated whether it had a flight plan and its heading, height and speed. Once it was clear it was an unknown they gave it an appropriate identification colour which made it stand out on our radar scopes."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article