On the 19th September 2025 between 0958 and 1011hrs Russia carried out another, in a series of air incursions into Estonian airspace. They were technically minor infractions but the last one lasted almost 12 minutes, and in the context of tensions with NATO – largely created by Russia itself, it was just another dangerous move in the never ending game of Baltic chess.
This is why another similar move hasn’t happened, and why Russia will think twice before it does so again.
For decades the process of a NATO air interception has followed the usual procedure. In my lifetime I’ve witnessed or been made aware of hundreds, and even flown on one in the rear seat of a Tornado. It’s a thrilling experience, pulling up next to a Tu-22M (NATO: Tu-26 Backfire) in the south Norwegian Sea.
Ground or air based radars see the enemy coming, aircraft are scrambled and certainly in the Cold War era and until recently, the aircraft doing the intercepting would have been pinging their radars looking for the target. The NATO aircraft would arrive, escort the Russians out of their airspace or just sit next to them if they were in international space. The point was always to make it absolutely clear an interception would always happen. We would never back down from them and they always knew we would come.
At the same time the Russians would test the time to intercept and note which units had been sent to do the intercepting. It was how the game has always been played for the best part of 60 years.
Previous Estonia incursions had not been deterred and NATO command was well aware that the Russians were not convinced by playing the game the old fashioned way. It was not stopping them crossing into Estonian air space and they had the advantage on their side of a massive area of air space from which the could change direction at any time, conduct an incursion and leave – most likely before NATO aircraft could actually get to them. The Russians were using every opportunity to press home their local superiority and make sure NATO knew it.
Their preferred aircraft for these operations is not so much a fighter in the classic sense, but a long range interceptor, The Mig-31 Foxhound. It’s incredibly fast in a straight line at Mach 2.8 – leaving most western aircraft standing – has a combat radius of around 1,900 miles (3,060Km) and can be in and out of an incursion zone in a couple of minutes, at heights as far up as 82,000ft (25,000m).
NATO knew this. It also knew that the Russian command system is nowhere near as integrated as NATO’s and Mig-31 pilots refer to the Ground Assisted Control for instructions on almost everything. It was clear these incursions were ordered and deliberate. The time had come to change the rules of the game and show the Russians that whatever they thought those rules were, NATO had changed them. Russia was about to find out once and for all how dramatically and effectively things have moved on.
NATO had made a military and political choice to reveal to the Russians they were not messing around any more, putting up with these incursions was not going to be sustainable, and it was time to demonstrate Western superiority. Once you read what happened and remember the calls for shooting down any future incursion that followed, you’ll understand why the Russians haven’t done it again. This is remarkable tale of NATO pushing back and Russia actually getting the message.
The Mig-31 uses a very powerful phased array radar, designed to look ahead for air targets, called the SBI-16 Zaslon. Later upgrades have referred to variants like Zaslon-M, enhancing detection ranges and track-while-scan functionality. These radars enable simultaneous tracking of multiple targets and coordination with other aircraft and ground systems. However they are unable to ‘look down’ and operate only in the air to air domain. Coupled to long range air to air missiles, the Foxhound represents the ideal long range interceptor platform – provided it can see the target of course.
The whole concept of the long range interceptor is a little bit 1950’s, derived from the days of the dominant strategic bomber as a nuclear weapons delivery platform. Long range interceptors – the most famous being the Su-15 Flagon which shot down Korean Air 007 on September 1st 1983, thinking it was a US RC-135 spy plane in Russian air space, are a Russian ‘thing’. The follow on Mig-25 and now the Mig-31 are still intended to fulfill a similar role, though against what is hard to ascertain in the 21st Century.
The Mig-31 may be capable, but it’s really from a different era, where straight line speed has little meaning and despite its powerful radar, it’s not really suited to modern air combat. Yet the Russians see it as perfectly suited to simply rattling NATO’s cage, and if that’s all it does, they’re happy.
In any event the Mig-31 Foxhound is an ideal way to get in and get out in a deliberate incursion role like this.
NATO was monitoring the Baltic States air space from ground radars and from a Gielenkirchen based AWACS several hundred kilometers back near the German/Polish border. It identified the three Russian Mig-31’s well before they entered Estonian airspace.
As soon as the AWACS spotted the aircraft they informed NATO at the Combined Air Operations Centre in Udem, Germany right on the border with the Netherlands, which ordered two Italian F-35’s to take off from their Estonian air base at Amari on the coast. They took off under compete operational silence. This was done through NATO secure encryption and the F-35’s were operating without radars active and without alerting the Russians. The F-35’s however could see exactly where the Russians were and what they were doing via NATO Datalink-16 shared from the AWACS. No need to use their own radars, which made them effectively invisible to the Zaslon radar on the Foxhounds.
Meanwhile a pair of Swedish Gripens on patrol over the Baltic, equipped with Meteor missiles are boxing in the Russians – and again, they have no idea. The Gripens know what the F-35’s know and vice versa, all shared with the AWACS and NATO command.
Meanwhile the Foxhounds are doing what they always do, testing response times, mapping radar coverage gaps, listening for comms and generally looking for weakness in the local air defence system. Yet that’s just part of what they aim for, because the real point is to get in and get out and make it so normal an event that it’s simply not worth intercepting every single time. It’s about enforcing their right to roam where they want and NATO getting fed up with stopping them. They have never understood that we don’t tire and we always are waiting for them.
This time there would be no polite escort, no gentlemanly wave from the cockpit. NATO was about to demonstrate overwhelming capability without firing a shot.
The Russians were also being watched by a US RQ-4 Globalhawk, over the Baltic, and that was backed up further by NATO signals intelligence supplied by a Ground Surveillance Satellite. it was the satellite that first knew the Russians were on the move.
The incursion was a favorite spot for the Russians, at Vaindloo island, just 28km from Russian air space. The Russians were bemused, no NATO aircraft appeared.
Meanwhile the F-35’s are using their AN/APG-81 Radars in passive mode, watching the Russians and relaying high band data to NATO and the Gripens. Everything the Russians do is being recorded and every transmission and signature unique to each aircraft logged. This data is permanently available to NATO for future use.
The Russians don’t know what’s about to hit them. Once the above data is known, the electronic warfare systems on the NATO aircraft know what to jam, when to jam it and how to maintain that jamming until they have completed their mission.
Meanwhile the Gripens are closing but not using active radar, reliant on the data provided by NATO from all of its sources, primarily though the F-35’s and AWACS. Gripen is fitted with a Leonardo Skyward-G IRS, and Saab’s Arexis EW suite. The IRS detects and Arexis can deliver the response – even more of a comprehensive response when it knows exactly what its up against, using data from the F-35’s and their own passive sensors.
If this was a hostile scenario the Swedes could have used their 200km range ramjet powered Meteor air to air missiles which the Russians wouldn’t even have known were coming. The missile is designed to gain a lock on the target without a radar spike to identify it as a threat to the Russian aircraft. Combined with what was about to happen it demonstrates to the Russians a staggering level of advancement they have never before encountered. Once they got back to their base and were debriefed they will have known the immense danger they were potentially in if this had been a combat scenario.
Now it is true that NATO policy on interception policing requires physical eyeballing of the hostiles, so to let that happen with maximum impact, the F-35’s had to get close enough to see the Foxhounds. The Gripens unleashed their EW using radio digital memory jamming, creating false targets and rendering the Zaslon-M full of rubbish data. The Russians cockpits would have lit up like a Christmas tree, making no sense whatever of the information the Zaslon was providing. The Arexis cut off the radio between the aircraft and their ground base. The Foxhounds were in effect being rendered useless. They could see nothing and communicate with nobody.
The F-35’s closed from behind – unseen – and identified the aircraft using their optical scanner before pulling away. The Gripens commander then used the emergency radio frequency to tell the Russians, “You are under our control. Return to Russian air space immediately”.
At first confused the Russian pilots turned one after another and departed Estonian air space, back into international space and continued their journey to Kaliningrad. Who would like to have been in the briefing room after that escapade?
At no point did the Russians see a NATO aircraft. They were made absolutely aware that none of their missile and radar systems were operating normally and they were powerless to request orders from their command. Yet clearly all three pilots knew they’d been completely out matched and effectively crippled by the NATO response. And the Russian air command knew it too. They were utterly outclassed, boxed in to a kill zone from which there was no getting away, and they couldn’t even see the aircraft responsible on radar let alone visually.
NATO demonstrated complete command of the air and a transformed digital data backbone working on a networked system utilizing multiple assets. The demonstration was so complete that the Russians got the message, especially when it was combined with NATO making it quite clear shooting down Russian aircraft wasn’t just a statement of intent if they did it again, it was backed up with a clear demonstration it could be done. It cannot be a coincidence it hasn’t happened since.
I’m going to be honest and say I was thrilled when I was shown how this was done, genuinely excited at how things have progressed and at the same time how little credit NATO and its organizations and members get for having quietly kept working towards ensuring the peace, while staying on top of the future of air combat.
I was equally moved by the fact that we don’t see what happens behind the scenes often enough. It was made public that the Russians had been told informally that threats of a shoot down scenario if they carried on with these provocations, are now very real and not just the words of an idle threat. It was backed up with the very real message NATO could achieve this and they would barely even know about it. All Russia has to do is ask its Foxhound pilots.
Russia understands only strength. NATO demonstrated it has the will and the capability. Quad erat demonstrandum Valdimir.
The Analyst
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