The alert "Alpha Scramble!", which warns that an unidentified aircraft has entered the airspace under NATO responsibility, can be triggered at any time of the day and any day of the week at the Siauliai Base (Lithuania). ), where a Spanish contingent performs Air Police work for the Northern Alliance. In fact, on one of the occasions in which the alarms have gone off in the last forty days, the lieutenant colonel who is in charge of the mission was caught in bed after midnight. From that precise moment, the military has a maximum of 15 minutes to fly two fighters in search of the suspicious plane for identification. So far, all those hunted have been Russians.
On April 1, the Spanish Vilkas detachment –which means Wolf in Lithuanian– arrived at the Siauliai Base to ensure the safety of the sky in the Baltic countries. The Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, traveled there yesterday, stating that this mission of the Armed Forces serves to demonstrate that Spain is a "serious, reliable, responsible and committed" ally of NATO.
Early in the morning, before the Ministry of Defense delegation landed on Lithuanian soil, the “Alpha Scramble!” could be heard at the base. after the Karmelava air control center detected an intruder flight entering the borders of Lithuania. In less than ten minutes, two of the eight F-18 aircraft that Spain contributes to the mission took off to try to identify the aircraft. As on all previous occasions – and with this one there are already 12 alerts in just over a month and a half – it was a Russian aircraft. About 200 kilometers from the base is Kaliningrad.
Military sources maintain that these aircraft from the Russian Federation carry out – on some occasions – this type of intrusion maneuvers to test NATO's defense capacity. Measure muscle, check responsiveness. As explained by Lieutenant Colonel David Soto, who is in charge of the 125 men and 15 women that make up the detachment, some of the intercepted planes violating Lithuanian airspace are Russian intelligence flights. Transport planes without flight plans have also been identified.
Some provocations that are on the rise and that take place at a time of maximum tension with Moscow after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For this reason, the approaches made by Spanish fighters to Russian planes are measured to the millimeter so as not to cause any sparks to fly. The response of the pilots to the controls of the Russian aircraft "is not aggressive", as Soto has described. According to the lieutenant colonel in command, the majority of pilots –once intercepted– tend to facilitate identification, although there are others who speed up, slow down or carry out diversionary maneuvers when they realize that a NATO aircraft is following them very closely.
The eight F-18 fighters have not only taken off in this time in response to those 12 alerts, but have flown more than 200 sorties. Most correspond to training tasks and deterrence tasks on the borders to prevent, precisely, that Russian incursions do not even take place. The same military sources admit that the pace of work in Siauliai is much more frenetic than in previous missions, such as the one deployed in Bulgaria a few months ago.
"These are difficult times that we are experiencing now," the Minister of Defense reminded the military, who traveled accompanied by the Chief of Defense Staff, Teodoro López Calderón. "I hope this war ends soon and people stop dying," Robles wished in his words of encouragement. The Vilkas detachment will be in Lithuania until August 31, but the expansion of missions that continue to provide adequate air defense to Putin's neighbors is already planned.
