U.S. reconnaissance plane made a surveillance flight in Finnish airspace. The surveillance flight headed towards the eastern border, to the airspace between Kouvola and Joensuu.
A U.S. Air Force Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance plane flew in Finnish airspace in the evening January 9. The plane flew back and forth between Kouvola and Joensuu for a couple of hours.
The plane began its journey in the afternoon from Waddington Air Base in the UK, from where it flew through Danish and Swedish airspace to the Gulf of Finland. The plane entered Finnish airspace from the north of Hanko and continued directly to the vicinity of the eastern border.
The US Air Force RC-135W Rivet Joint that flew in Finland is a signals reconnaissance plane that can detect and locate, for example, radar signals and various radio systems and analyze communication traffic.
The plane flew at an altitude of about ten kilometers, allowing its sensors to monitor communications taking place on the Russian side several hundred kilometers away.
The main purpose is to collect information about the activities of the target country's armed forces.
Signal reconnaissance can also be used to determine whether there are devices that transmit radio signals near the border, for example. It can be used to determine whether there are people in the area who would, for example, try to illegally cross the border.
Recently, a US signals intelligence aircraft has been conducting regular surveillance flights in addition to the Baltic Sea, near the Belarusian border. The aircraft has also flown regularly in the Black Sea.
Source: Yle (in Finnish)
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