A US Navy Boeing P-8A Poseidon plane recently conducted a reconnaissance flight near a Russian military base in Hmeimim, Syria, according the IntelSky Twitter account, which calls itself a "Middle East & Mediterranean Sky observatory."
According to the tweet published Friday, the US plane spent about two hours near the Syrian coast, with several approaches to Hmeimim, where a Russian Air Force base is located.
Recently, foreign military intelligence has ramped up operations near Russian borders. Both planes and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) have been detected recently near Russia's Krasnodar Krai, Crimea, and the country's western borders.
Flight trail #UPDATE of the 🇺🇸✈️#USN Boeing P-8A Poseidon (Patrol Squadron VP-26) Multimission Maritime Aircraft #ASW/#ASUW/#EWSP/#ESM ICAO: #AE4EC9 Registration:168764 in surveillance and reconnaissance mission Eastern Mediterranean, on the #Russia|n #Hmeimim AFB 🇷🇺 in #Syria 🇸🇾 pic.twitter.com/v34ThG8LAD
— IntelSky📡✈ (@Intel_sky) 4 января 2019 г.
Last week, a US Boeing RC-135V conducted a similar recon operation, spending some three hours near the Crimean coast. In the early days of December, both a Poseidon and an RQ-4B Global Hawk drone flew near the Russian Black Sea coast.
Earlier in November, the Russian Air Force intercepted a US recon plane over the Black Sea, sparking the traditional reaction from US military command, which called the interception "unsafe."
