RAF RC-135 electronic reconnaissance aircraft. It is reported that Russia accidentally fired on one of them. Photo: rceAirForce Images
According to US Department of Defense officials, last year a Russian aircraft aimed and fired a missile at a British aircraft due to a misheard order and only failed to fire. shot down an RAF reconnaissance aircraft due to a munition malfunction.
Two Defense Department officials with knowledge of the Sept. 29 incident over the Black Sea told the New York Times that the incident was much more serious than originally reported and could have amounted to an act of war.
According to US officials, a Russian Su-27 fighter pilot involved in the incident misinterpreted commands from a ground controller and fired a missile at an RAF aircraft.
One official described the incident as «really, very scary» .
A British RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft, which can carry up to 30 people, was listening in on communications between a Su-27 pilot and ground control, officials told the newspaper.
According to them, the Russian pilot misinterpreted the words of the radar operator and believed that he had permission to fire. The missile was fired but did not work.
It is possible that the missile was blocked by a set of defensive countermeasures that the RAF aircraft had at its disposal. An RAF spokesman declined to comment on why the missile malfunctioned.
A Russian Su-27 pilot is said to have misheard an order. Photo: RAF
US Officials' The comments are based on a recently leaked Pentagon document that describes the incident as «almost shot down.»
In October, Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace told Parliament that a Russian plane had fired a missile. a missile «in close proximity» to a British aircraft. He said he did not see the move as a deliberate escalation, as the Kremlin called it a «technical glitch.»
In response to claims that the incident was a deliberate attempt to shoot down a British aircraft, a spokesman for the UK Department of Defense stated that a significant proportion of the leaked reports were «untrue, fraud or both».
“We strongly caution those who take the veracity of these allegations at face value, and also advise them not to rush to question the source and purpose of such leaks,” the official added.
Arms Ukraine — Su-27
Elsewhere, leaked Pentagon documents claimed that Vladimir Putin personally intervened in a bitter feud between the Wagner group and the Russian Defense Ministry.
The document, which was not part of the original US leak, highlights the depth of the struggle between various divisions of the Russian states due to the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian president is said to have arranged the meeting in hopes of ending a dispute between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner, and Sergei Shoigu, Russia's defense minister.
Mr. Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman and close associate of the Kremlin leader, has repeatedly accused the Russian defense ministry of not supplying much-needed ammunition to his frontline mercenaries.
«The meeting almost certainly dealt, at least in part, with Prigozhin's public accusations and the resulting tension with Shoigu,» the New York Times document read.
Information from the latest 27-page leak was obtained using electronic intercepts collected by US intelligence agencies.
Among them was a report on a separate conflict between Russian domestic intelligence and the country's Ministry of Defense.
The FSB accused military in concealing the scale of the losses suffered by Moscow troops since the invasion of Ukraine for almost 14 years. months ago.
The latest document does not include any figures that the Russian Ministry of Defense is distributing to the government.
But when Mr. Shoigu publicly released the death toll in Russia last September, he claimed that only 5,937 servicemen had died since the start of the war.
According to a US intelligence document, the FSB “calculated that the actual number of Russian wounded and those killed in action were closer to 110,000.» National Guard, Wagner mercenaries or Chechen fighters led by Ramzan Kadyrov, a pro-Kremlin military leader.
Ukrainian artillery on the front line near Bakhmut. Russian casualties are reported to be much higher than official figures. Photo: REUTERS
According to US officials, this scandal highlights the «constant reluctance of the military to report bad news along the command hierarchy.»
Wash. including up to 43,000 killed. in action.
The latest batch of documents has also been leaked to Discord, a platform primarily used by gamers.
Pentagon officials have previously warned that the leaks pose a «very serious» risk to US national security.
The documents were genuine, but may contain outdated, inaccurate or altered information, they added.
Officers did not dispute the information contained in the latest leaked documents, according to the New York Times, but did not began to check their content.
Свежие комментарии