MILITARY KONINKLIJKE LUCHTMACHT F-16
P
rotecting the Baltic
States’ airspace is what
the Baltic Air Policing
(BAP) mission is all
about. These tiny states
do not have a fighter
force themselves and
rely on NATO fighters
based on their soil on
24/7 alert status, like
the quick-reaction alert (QRA) maintained
across all NATO countries. A control and
reporting centre activates the QRA when an
aircraft enters Baltic airspace without having
filed a flight plan or without identifying itself.
That aircraft may be a combat aircraft from
another country, but equally it may be an
airliner. Within a very short period of time,
two fully armed fighters must be in the air to
monitor the intercepted aircraft, take photos
and escort the bogey.
NATO established the BAP QRA post at Šiauliai
Air Base when the three Baltic States, Lithuania,
Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO in 2004. A
second QRA station was established in 2014 in
Estonia at Ämari Air Base. The detachments are
replaced by other units every four months.
The Ämari detachment was manned by
Luftwaffe Eurofighters when the Dutch were at
Šiauliai. Polish F-16s took up the air policing
cudgel on May 2 when the Dutch left for home.
The Baltic Sea is mostly surrounded by NATO
countries, but two relatively small pieces
of coast belong to Russia. In the northeast
is the St Petersburg area situated between
Finland and Estonia. In the south is the heavily
militarised Kaliningrad oblast, sandwiched
between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. A
wide range of military aircraft and surface-to-air
missile systems are based in Kaliningrad, which
itself can be reached from St Petersburg by sea
or via Finland and the Baltic States.Gert Kromhout reports from Šiauliai Air Base, Lithuania, on the
Koninklijke Luchtmacht’s most recent NATO Baltic Air Policing mission
Baltic Alert