At the Estonian Air Force Base Amari, everyday conversations and joint television viewing can be interrupted at any moment by the announcement that “the zombies have moved”, writes the BBC.
At one such moment, the airspace observer announces: “Zombie heading north out of Kaliningrad”. The apparent calm breaks and the staff take their seats in the operations room, where screens flash with incoming data.
This is the daily life of the Quick Reaction Force working in the Baltic Airspace Surveillance Mission. They guard NATO’s northeastern border, where Russia regularly violates the alliance’s airspace. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has forced NATO to strengthen the alliance’s eastern border especially carefully to prevent Russia from invading a NATO country, for example, one of the Baltic states or Poland.
Observers refer to suspicious Russian aircraft as “zombies”.
Wing Cdr Scott Maccoll from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland explained: “That can usually be any one of three things. Either it won’t have filed a flight plan, or they’re not squawking [communicating] or they’re simply not responding to Air Traffic Control. Sometimes it’s all three.”
In this case, it was a false alarm, the “zombie” turns north and moves away from the NATO borders.
The Amari base, home to Typhoon fighters, served the Soviet Air Force during the Cold War, and in the nearby forest is a cemetery where Soviet airmen were buried. Today’s mission for NATO pilots is continuous and complex. After Finland joined NATO, the Baltic Sea is surrounded by seven members of the alliance, and when Sweden is also admitted to NATO, there will be eight.
Meanwhile,
Russia still has two “fortifications” on the Baltic Sea: its second largest city, St. Petersburg, to the east,
and the exclave of Kaliningrad, or Konigsberg, between Lithuania and Poland. Missiles and other military equipment are currently located in Konigsberg. Russian SU-27s and cargo planes constantly move between these two locations and force NATO forces to be ready to act on their own. One of the youngest Typhoon pilots said: “So we could be sat there, feet up on the table, having a cup of coffee, and then the next minute the alarm sounds. We respond to any alarm as if it’s the real deal.” In the hangar, another pilot approaches one of the Typhoons. They are primed and ready to take off if needed.
What happens when pilots get close to Russian “zombies”? Maccoll pointed out that the main task is to protect NATO airspace, while the rules of engagement are classified information. Another pilot explained that it is not known what type of aircraft will be encountered, and once it is identified, detailed instructions are received from mission control.
Maccoll said that there have been eight intercept operations, and all of the violators have been Russian aircraft.
He added that monitoring of the Baltic airspace has been going on for years, and since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the dynamics have certainly changed.
The war has forced more attention to be paid to border protection on the ground as well. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, whose childhood was spent in the Soviet Union, stated that there is no doubt – if Putin had been successful in Ukraine, it would only be a matter of time before he would want to seize the Baltic states as well. Brigadier Giles Harris, who heads the British mission in Estonia, said: “NATO’s challenge here in the Baltics is to deter Russia without escalating.”
But are the NATO forces in the Baltics big enough? Brigadier Harris replied that the battlegroups should be enough to deter Russia. If that doesn’t happen, and Russia does invade, “we’ll go east and fight them,” Harris added.