NATO Fighters Intercepted Russian Military Aircraft Over the Baltic Sea — And the Details Are More Unsettling Than They Sound

When the call came, two French Rafale crews were already prepared at Lithuania’s Šiauliai Air Base. They didn’t have to wait for a briefing or make any changes. In two vans, they raced from headquarters to the hangars, slid into their cockpits, started the engines, and waited for the order. After that, they taxied out and ascended into the clear Baltic skies. It took minutes to complete the entire process, from standby to wheels up. That level of preparedness doesn’t just happen. Everyone at Šiauliai is aware that this will occur again because it has occurred numerous times in the past.

NATO assembled aircraft from six nations—France, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark, and Romania—on Monday, April 20, in order to intercept a Russian formation that was passing over the Baltic Sea. The Russian team was quite large. About ten fighter jets, alternating between Su-30s and Su-35s, flew alongside the larger aircraft, including two Tu-22M3 supersonic strategic bombers—a type of aircraft intended to carry long-range cruise missiles. Over four hours passed during the entire mission. The flight was later confirmed by Russia’s Defense Ministry, which described it as a planned exercise over neutral international waters carried out in perfect accordance with airspace regulations.

It is worthwhile to investigate that final assertion. After years of these encounters, NATO has consistently maintained that Russian military aircraft routinely fly without filing flight plans and without turning on their transponders, which transmit an aircraft’s identity and position to air traffic control. It’s not a small procedural grievance. From the standpoint of aviation, an aircraft that doesn’t reveal its identity or its destination is invisible until it isn’t. The Russian military may see this as a rightful use of its authority over international airspace. It’s just as likely, if not more likely, that the lack of transponders is a purposeful decision that compels NATO to act quickly, respond visibly, and expend fuel and crew time to demonstrate that it is paying attention.

Since Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia joined NATO in 2004, the Baltic Air Policing mission has been ongoing. That equates to over twenty years of fighter rotations, four-month deployments, and alert crews waiting for just this kind of call in hangars at bases like Šiauliai. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which drastically altered the political landscape in northern Europe, NATO jets were intercepting Russian aircraft about 300 times a year, primarily over northern European waters, with many of the flights heading to or from Kaliningrad, Russia’s detached enclave on the Baltic coast that is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. Since 2022, the number has not decreased.

The fact that April 20th occurred wasn’t what made it noteworthy. The scale was the cause. It is not a navigation exercise to have ten escort fighters and two strategic bombers. In both military planning and public perception, Tu-22M3s are long-range aircraft with the kind of strike capability that unnerves defense ministries during quiet times. The week after NATO jets were scrambled four times in six days, from April 13 to 19, sending them over the Baltic with a sizable fighter escort on a four-hour route seems more calculated than normal. Although it’s still unclear exactly what message Russia is sending and to whom, there’s a feeling that it’s measuring or demonstrating something.

It’s difficult to ignore the timing. With concerns about the United States’ commitment to the alliance and European members increasing their own defense spending in circumstances that would have seemed unlikely five years ago, NATO’s eastern flank is more politically complex than it has been in years. Among the countries scrambling jets on Monday were Sweden and Finland, both of which joined NATO after decades of purposeful neutrality. The geography of that fact alone—two nations that cautiously stayed out of the alliance during the Cold War are now launching interceptors from their own airspace to shadow Russian bombers—says something about how drastically northern Europe’s security architecture has changed.

Russia will most likely take to the skies once more. It’s highly likely that NATO will scramble once more. At Šiauliai, the crews will get ready and wait. The question that no one over the Baltic Sea on Monday could answer from their cockpit was whether that back-and-forth continues to be a controlled display of competing intentions or whether the margins for miscalculation narrow over time.