Russian pilot tried to shoot down British air force plane, report says
- The Su-27 pilot allegedly fired missiles at an unarmed UK plane last year, after getting an ambiguous command, though his co-pilot tried to get him to stop
- Russia had previously attributed the incident to a ‘technical malfunction’, but intercepted communications suggest otherwise
A Russian pilot deliberately fired missiles at a Royal Air Force surveillance plane in international airspace over the Black Sea last year, the BBC reported on Thursday – an incident Russia previously attributed to a “technical malfunction”.
The broadcaster said that intercepted communications suggested that the pilot of a Russian Su-27 fighter plane fired on the unarmed UK aircraft in September 2022 after receiving an ambiguous command from a Russian ground station and that his co-pilot tried to get him to stop.
The British Rivet Joint aircraft has sensors to intercept communications, and its crew would have been able to listen to the incident.
In public, British officials have played down the incident. Then UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told lawmakers in October that a Russian plane had “released a missile in the vicinity of’’ a British plane and that he had demanded an explanation from Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
He said that Russia had answered that “it was a technical malfunction of the Su-27 fighter”.