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This morning I worked all hours in workshop and outside without paying any attention to the fighter jets flying overhead. It was around noon when I was finishing up, and I looked up to see that they weren't just Mirage 2000s, but also F/A-18s ! I'd never seen one before. Unfortunately, they were passing over for the last time.
I managed to see a two-seater F/A-18, probably an F/A-18F Super Hornet.
Does anyone know if there are any NATO exercises over France at the moment ?
I managed to see a two-seater F/A-18, probably an F/A-18F Super Hornet.
Does anyone know if there are any NATO exercises over France at the moment ?
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You can monitor military flights in your vicinity through adsbexchange. Activate the U-button in the top right corner before you do.
Bear in mind that not all air forces allow ADS-B transponder data to be recorded, so this map doesn't give you the whole picture. Oftentimes military pilots will only activate their transponders if travelling through crowded airspace.
Bear in mind that not all air forces allow ADS-B transponder data to be recorded, so this map doesn't give you the whole picture. Oftentimes military pilots will only activate their transponders if travelling through crowded airspace.
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Flightradar24 isn't a good provider for plane spotting in my humble opinion. It blocks way too many signals. You don't have to physically shut off your transponder to remain incognito, you can also contact the site and ask for your signal to be suppressed. That's what many law enforcement agencies and militaries do.
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Thanks for the tip ! Do you know if it's possible to do a replay with adsbexchange ?
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It was over the Bourgogne, near Dijon. Around midday/1am.
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Nothing on the database, unfortunately. Which is weird, since they would fly with their transponders on near so big of a city with an airfield.
Perhaps a data collecting error. ADS-B requires a line of sight.
Perhaps a data collecting error. ADS-B requires a line of sight.
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Against the backdrop of escalating tensions between Western powers and Russia over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, a significant German-led naval exercise commenced in the Baltic Sea.
The naval exercise witnessed the participation of various Western allies, including Germany, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. These nations, along with other NATO members, joined forces to enhance their interoperability and strengthen their defense capabilities in the region.
The primary objectives of this exercise were to improve coordination among participating navies, practice joint operations, and refine maritime tactics. By conducting these exercises, Western allies aim to demonstrate their commitment to regional security and deter potential adversaries from engaging in aggressive actions.
About 3,200 soldiers from 14 countries are taking part in the German-led Northern Coasts 23 exercise, the German navy said in a statement. The exercise will involve 30 ships, submarines, up to 19 aircraft, and various landing units, it said.
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/...n-allies-start-major-baltic-sea-naval-drills/
The naval exercise witnessed the participation of various Western allies, including Germany, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. These nations, along with other NATO members, joined forces to enhance their interoperability and strengthen their defense capabilities in the region.
The primary objectives of this exercise were to improve coordination among participating navies, practice joint operations, and refine maritime tactics. By conducting these exercises, Western allies aim to demonstrate their commitment to regional security and deter potential adversaries from engaging in aggressive actions.
About 3,200 soldiers from 14 countries are taking part in the German-led Northern Coasts 23 exercise, the German navy said in a statement. The exercise will involve 30 ships, submarines, up to 19 aircraft, and various landing units, it said.
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/...n-allies-start-major-baltic-sea-naval-drills/
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On Hungarian propaganda television, the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament called Sweden a country that spits on itself and its allies.
On Sweden's NATO membership, he said. The question of Sweden's NATO membership has been dragging on for almost a year, but it remains unclear what the Swedes would have to do to get the Hungarian government's support.
What the Swedes are doing to their own country is a direct consequence of the fact that they don't like their country, in fact they hate it, because if they didn't hate it, they wouldn't destroy it, said László Kövér on the Bayer show.
In the studio of HírTV, the Speaker of the National Assembly was struck by a Swedish educational film presented in Sweden as a school curriculum, according to which the situation of democracy in Hungary has been steadily deteriorating since 2010. Commenting on the video, he said that we do not need the kind of ally that this film reflects, and then went on to say that the country's accession to NATO is a good thing:
"I am not sure we should vote for it.
I don't think we need an ally that has the view of us and our patriotism that this little film reflects. What are we doing in an alliance? So someone is out of place."
hvg.hu
The question of Sweden's NATO membership has been dragging on for almost a year, and only the Turkish and Hungarian parliaments in the military alliance have not given it their blessing. While the Turks point the finger of support for Kurdish separatism, it remains unclear what the Swedes would have to do to support the Hungarian government. Practically every month, Hungarian government representatives invent new excuses as to why the Parliament has still not ratified Sweden's accession to NATO.
On Wednesday, Gergely Gulyás called the short film an unfounded accusation and an unjustified insult, and said that if the film is played in public schools, it means that Sweden is doing everything it can to prevent Hungary from ratifying its accession to NATO.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó joined the chorus with a letter to his Swedish counterpart. In it, he sent a not-so-subtle message that "insults" like these do not help to meet Swedish demands.
David Pressman, US Ambassador, reminded the Hungarian government that every single fighter aircraft in the Hungarian Defence Forces is a Swedish aircraft, and that every single aircraft is maintained with the support of the Swedish military. We wrote more about this here:
On Hungarian propaganda television, the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament called Sweden a country that spits on itself and its allies.
On Sweden's NATO membership, he said. The question of Sweden's NATO membership has been dragging on for almost a year, but it remains unclear what the Swedes would have to do to get the Hungarian government's support.
What the Swedes are doing to their own country is a direct consequence of the fact that they don't like their country, in fact they hate it, because if they didn't hate it, they wouldn't destroy it, said László Kövér on the Bayer show.
In the studio of HírTV, the Speaker of the National Assembly was struck by a Swedish educational film presented in Sweden as a school curriculum, according to which the situation of democracy in Hungary has been steadily deteriorating since 2010. Commenting on the video, he said that we do not need the kind of ally that this film reflects, and then went on to say that the country's accession to NATO is a good thing:
"I am not sure we should vote for it.
I don't think we need an ally that has the view of us and our patriotism that this little film reflects. What are we doing in an alliance? So someone is out of place."
Kövér László: Nem hiszem, hogy nekünk egy olyan „szövetségesre” szükségünk van, amely a saját hazájára is köp, nemhogy ránk
Svédország NATO-csatlakozása kapcsán kijelentette: „Nem biztos, hogy ezt nekünk meg kell szavazni.” Svédország NATO-csatlakozásának kérdése lassan egy éve húzódik, de továbbra sem világos, a magyar kormány támogatásához mit kellene tenniük a svédeknek.
hvg.hu
The question of Sweden's NATO membership has been dragging on for almost a year, and only the Turkish and Hungarian parliaments in the military alliance have not given it their blessing. While the Turks point the finger of support for Kurdish separatism, it remains unclear what the Swedes would have to do to support the Hungarian government. Practically every month, Hungarian government representatives invent new excuses as to why the Parliament has still not ratified Sweden's accession to NATO.
On Wednesday, Gergely Gulyás called the short film an unfounded accusation and an unjustified insult, and said that if the film is played in public schools, it means that Sweden is doing everything it can to prevent Hungary from ratifying its accession to NATO.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó joined the chorus with a letter to his Swedish counterpart. In it, he sent a not-so-subtle message that "insults" like these do not help to meet Swedish demands.
David Pressman, US Ambassador, reminded the Hungarian government that every single fighter aircraft in the Hungarian Defence Forces is a Swedish aircraft, and that every single aircraft is maintained with the support of the Swedish military. We wrote more about this here:
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The dislike for one another has gone on for 1000s of years. It surprised me to see how much different two countries like Sweden and Denmark are..
On Hungarian propaganda television, the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament called Sweden a country that spits on itself and its allies.
On Sweden's NATO membership, he said. The question of Sweden's NATO membership has been dragging on for almost a year, but it remains unclear what the Swedes would have to do to get the Hungarian government's support.
What the Swedes are doing to their own country is a direct consequence of the fact that they don't like their country, in fact they hate it, because if they didn't hate it, they wouldn't destroy it, said László Kövér on the Bayer show.
In the studio of HírTV, the Speaker of the National Assembly was struck by a Swedish educational film presented in Sweden as a school curriculum, according to which the situation of democracy in Hungary has been steadily deteriorating since 2010. Commenting on the video, he said that we do not need the kind of ally that this film reflects, and then went on to say that the country's accession to NATO is a good thing:
"I am not sure we should vote for it.
I don't think we need an ally that has the view of us and our patriotism that this little film reflects. What are we doing in an alliance? So someone is out of place."
Kövér László: Nem hiszem, hogy nekünk egy olyan „szövetségesre” szükségünk van, amely a saját hazájára is köp, nemhogy ránk
Svédország NATO-csatlakozása kapcsán kijelentette: „Nem biztos, hogy ezt nekünk meg kell szavazni.” Svédország NATO-csatlakozásának kérdése lassan egy éve húzódik, de továbbra sem világos, a magyar kormány támogatásához mit kellene tenniük a svédeknek.
The question of Sweden's NATO membership has been dragging on for almost a year, and only the Turkish and Hungarian parliaments in the military alliance have not given it their blessing. While the Turks point the finger of support for Kurdish separatism, it remains unclear what the Swedes would have to do to support the Hungarian government. Practically every month, Hungarian government representatives invent new excuses as to why the Parliament has still not ratified Sweden's accession to NATO.
On Wednesday, Gergely Gulyás called the short film an unfounded accusation and an unjustified insult, and said that if the film is played in public schools, it means that Sweden is doing everything it can to prevent Hungary from ratifying its accession to NATO.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó joined the chorus with a letter to his Swedish counterpart. In it, he sent a not-so-subtle message that "insults" like these do not help to meet Swedish demands.
David Pressman, US Ambassador, reminded the Hungarian government that every single fighter aircraft in the Hungarian Defence Forces is a Swedish aircraft, and that every single aircraft is maintained with the support of the Swedish military. We wrote more about this here:
After altogether seven days of competing on Saturday, the three-personnel-strong sniper team from Finland that consisted of service personnel from the Jaeger Brigade and Pori Brigade achieved their victory.
– Our expectations were high but it was a complete surprise that we won this major and demanding competition for the European military sniping championship. As a team we cooperated well although we did not practice together before the competition. We achieved this thanks to the Finnish Defence Forces’ cohesive and coherent sniper training, the leader of Finland’s military sniper team says.
Suomi voitti European Best Sniper Team -kilpailun -
maavoimat.fi
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They looked for the team to hand them their medals, but were unable to locate them, so they hung the medals on some tree branches. The trees politefully thanked them in Finnish.
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The Netherlands is deploying three Reaper drones to Romania in Q1 2024 to monitor the eastern border of NATO territory. The initial length of the deployment is projected to be 6-12 months, involving 135 personnel with an estimated cost of €14m.
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Earlier this month, as the world’s attention was focused on the horror unfolding in Israel and Gaza, it was easy to miss the news that two subsea telecommunications cables and a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea had been damaged.
On the night of 7 October, the 77-kilometre Balticconnector gas pipeline and a separate but close-by subsea telecommunications cable stretching between Finland and Estonia were damaged in the Gulf of Finland. A week later, it emerged that, on the same night, another subsea telecommunications cable—connecting Estonia and Sweden—had also been damaged.
That might not seem particularly newsworthy. After all, subsea cables—despite facilitating around 95% of internet traffic, making them the physical backbone of our digital world—are notoriously vulnerable to damage. These fibre optic cables, often only the diameter of a garden hose, along with gas pipelines, zigzag all across the ocean floor, where they can suffer damage from storms, marine life, waves, earthquakes and accidental maritime vehicle activity. There are hundreds of such incidents each year.
This case, however, appears to have been no accident.
Finland, Estonia and Sweden soon announced that the gas pipeline and cables had likely been deliberately damaged and were being investigated as related incidents.
At the centre of the investigation was a Russian state-owned nuclear-powered cargo ship, the Sevmorput. Russia has long posed a threat to vital subsea cables in the region, particularly since the start of the Ukraine war. The threat has escalated since the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022. Indeed, earlier this year Russia announced that it could damage subsea cables in retaliation for Nord Stream and European countries’ support for Ukraine. In June NATO even set up a subsea cable taskforce because of the high threat of Russian sabotage in the region. And with Finland recently joining NATO—and Sweden in the process of joining—it’s highly likely that Russia damaged the cables in retaliation.
However, another vessel was also reported to be under investigation—a Hong Kong–registered cargo ship, the NewNew Polar Bear, that had been travelling with the Russian vessel.
Open-source tracking showed that both the Russian and Chinese vessels had been in the exact location at the exact time when each of three lines—the two subsea telecoms cables and the gas pipeline—was damaged.
This is where the mystery starts to get stranger.
On 20 October, Finland announced that the Chinese ship—not the Russian vessel—was the prime suspect for damaging the Balticconnector pipeline. Estonia and Sweden followed by saying that the Chinese vessel was also the prime suspect in both subsea cable incidents.
An investigation by Finland into the gas pipeline has since determined that the damage was indeed caused by the Chinese vessel. Finnish authorities have recovered its anchor from the site. The next phase of the investigation will be to determine—somehow—whether the damage was done intentionally, accidentally or as a result of poor maritime activity, and what the motivation was. After the revelation that the Chinese vessel was at fault for the gas pipeline damage, Estonia and Sweden reaffirmed that the subsea cable incidents were linked to the gas pipeline attack.
Unsurprisingly, both Russia and China have vehemently denied any involvement in damaging the cables. Russia, despite its history of threats to sabotage European subsea cables and its recent sabre-rattling over NATO expansion, has dismissed the accusations as ‘rubbish’. China, for its part, has agreed to provide information and called for an ‘objective, fair, and professional’ investigation, emphasising the Chinese vessel’s routine maritime activities. Central to this mystery is why a Chinese vessel would even be involved in damaging subsea cables in the Baltic Sea in the first place. Would China really take its ‘no-limits partnership’ with Russia to a whole new level?
Indeed, this is where the situation gets murkier still.
While initially the NewNew Polar Bear was reported to be operated by China’s Hainan Xin Xin Yang Shipping Company, an update to the ship’s paperwork while still in transit a few days ago has changed its operator’s name to Torgmoll, a Russian company specialising in maritime trade with China. Marine ownership and control are often opaque, and in some instances, downright shady. It’s possible that Russia chartered the vessel to conduct the sabotage, knowing it would test and complicate any European response if the vessel was registered in Hong Kong. Russia may have undertaken the sabotage with or without the knowledge of Beijing. Indeed, China may be involved, knowing that the murkiness of the situation makes it difficult to figure out who was responsible for what.
Attribution of responsibility for this kind of incident is extremely difficult, and it’s unlikely we will ever find out exactly what happened. And that of course, is exactly why Russia—or China—has done it. The deliberate targeting of subsea cables and gas pipelines during peacetime is a tactic that falls in the grey zone—actions that are coercive, effective and aggressive, yet fall below the threshold of armed conflict—even if it can be proved.
It’s not clear how this story will play out. What is clear, however, is that the world should be watching it closely, because it’s likely that the ripples from these attacks in the Baltic Sea will extend far beyond its waters.
Mercedes Page is a senior fellow at ASPI
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/r...e sabotage of subsea cables in the Baltic Sea
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