US Spy Plane Sweeps Russia's Western Flank
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A U.S. spy plane has swept across NATO's northern flank—near major military bases in northwest Russia—flight tracking data shows, marking the latest flight by NATO surveillance aircraft close to Russian soil.
A U.S. Air Force (USAF) RC-135V Rivet Joint aircraft took off from a base in eastern England on Tuesday for a roughly 12 hour flight, first traveling north over Norway before nearing Russia's Murmansk region, data from publicly available flight tracking platform FlightRadar24 shows.
The aircraft reached the area northeast of the Russian town of Severomorsk before turning back and returning to the U.K. via Finland, the Baltic states that are pressed up against Russia, Poland, Germany and then the Netherlands. It skirts around Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad, a wedge of Russian soil squeezed between Lithuania and Poland, tracking data indicates.
Russia's northwestern Murmansk region borders NATO member Finland, and is home to the country's formidable Northern Fleet. The Northern Fleet plays a major role in Russia's nuclear arsenal.
An RC-135W Rivet Joint and two F-35 Lightnings fly over The Mall during a flypast to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day in London, England, on May 5, 2025.
An RC-135W Rivet Joint and two F-35 Lightnings fly over The Mall during a flypast to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day in London, England, on May 5, 2025.Russia has a number of military bases and airfields around the city of Murmansk and nearby Severomorsk, the home of the main Northern Fleet headquarters and a major submarine base.
The Olenya airbase, hosting long-range Russian bombers, is north of Severomorsk, and Russia has in recent years modernized its Severomorsk-1 naval airbase. Gadzhiyevo, another major submarine base, sits north of Murmansk and Severomorsk.
The U.S. and the U.K. have both operated Rivet Joint aircraft in eastern Europe in recent weeks. A British Royal Air Force (RAF) RC-135 flew an almost identical flight path through Europe up to Murmansk last week.
The Boeing RC-135 aircraft hoovers up what is known as signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which can come from a variety of sources, like written messages or data from weapons and radar systems. Iterations of the RC-135 have been in use with the U.S. military for decades.
The USAF Rivet Joint, identified on FlightRadar24 by the call sign, "JAKE 17," took off from the U.K. base of Mildenhall at 7 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) on Tuesday, and landed back at the same base at just after 7 p.m. U.K. time (2 p.m. ET).
The USAF's fleet of RC-135s have been "hard pressed of late with urgent demands for SIGINT collection at U.S.-Mexico border, East Asia, eastern Europe, and the Middle East," Olli Suorsa, an assistant professor in homeland security at the government-owned Abu Dhabi-based Rabdan Academy, previously told Newsweek.
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