LONDON (AP) \u2014 A Russian pilot deliberately fired missiles at a Royal Air Force surveillance plane in international airspace over the Black Sea last year, the BBC reported Thursday \u2014 an incident Russia previously attributed to a ” technical malfunction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The broadcaster said that intercepted communications suggested that the pilot of a Russian Su-27 fighter jet fired on the unarmed U.K. plane in September 2022 after receiving an ambiguous command from a Russian ground station and that his co-pilot tried to get him to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The British Rivet Joint aircraft has sensors to intercept communications, and its crew would have been able to listen to the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In public, British officials have downplayed the incident. Then U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told lawmakers in October that a Russian jet had \u201creleased a missile in the vicinity of\u2019’ a British plane and that he had demanded an explanation from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. He said that Russia had answered that \u201cit was a technical malfunction of the Su-27 fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe do not consider this incident to constitute a deliberate escalation on the part of the Russians, and our analysis concurs that it was due to a malfunction,\u201d Wallace said. He added that the RAF had resumed surveillance patrols over the Black Sea with fighter aircraft escorts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked about Thursday\u2019s report, Britain\u2019s Ministry of Defense said Wallace had \u201cinformed the House of Commons within three weeks of the event occurring, in the interest of transparency and safety.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur intent has always been to protect the safety of our operations, avoid unnecessary escalation and inform the public and international community,\u201d the ministry said. \u201cThis incident is a stark reminder of the potential consequences of Putin\u2019s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spokesman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Max Blain, said the prime minister was confident Wallace hadn\u2019t misled lawmakers with his statement, adding that \u201cobviously there are limitations on some of the operational detail that can be put into the public domain\u201d for security reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Intercepted communications suggest the pilot of a Russian Su-27 fighter jet fired on the unarmed U.K. plane in September 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":108403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,8,23,12,26,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[594],"class_list":["post-76654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-flashpoints","category-home","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"4ULJOHZSWNH45HOTTJJK7USOHE","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2023\/09\/14\/russian-pilot-tried-to-shoot-down-a-british-spy-plane-last-fallbbc\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n