LONDON: In what could have been catastrophic, it was confirmed on Saturday that a Russian military aircraft turned off its transponders
to avoid commercial radar and nearly collided with a passenger jet over Sweden.Sweden's air force chief Major General Micael Byden said on Sunday that the aircraft's transponders, which make the plane visible to commercial radar, were shut off.
Swedish fighter jets which were sent up to identify the aircraft later identified it as a Russian intelligence plane.
Military tension has reached an all-time high between the West and Russia prompted by the recent Ukraine crisis leading to a highly disturbing picture of violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea and simulated attack runs over a very wide geographical area across Europe.
A British think tank recently looked at this serious crisis and confirmed 40 specific incidents that have occurred over the last eight months.
"Apart from routine or near-routine encounters", the European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank, has produced a detailed study of this more assertive Russian activity.
They have identified 11 serious incidents of a more aggressive or unusually provocative nature, bringing a higher level risk of escalation.
These include harassment of reconnaissance planes, close overflights over warships and Russian 'mock bombing raid' missions.
It also singles out three high risk incidents which carried a high probability of causing casualties or a direct military confrontation: a narrowly avoided collision between a civilian airliner and Russian surveillance plane, abduction of an Estonian intelligence officer and a large-scale Swedish 'submarine hunt'.
Sweden confirmed that the two aircraft nearly collided above southern Sweden with a commercial passenger jet that had taken off from Copenhagen in Denmark.
"This is serious. This is inappropriate. This is outright dangerous when you turn off the transponder," Swedish defence minister Peter Hultqvist said on Sunday.
ELN has hinted at Russia's posturing being similar to the Cold War years when these sorts of flights and activities were used to regularly test out NATO defences.
ELN said says "Even though direct military confrontation has been avoided so far, the mix of more aggressive Russian posturing and the readiness of Western forces to show resolve increases the risk of unintended escalation and the danger of losing control over events".
"Since the Russian annexation of Crimea, the intensity and gravity of incidents involving Russian and Western militaries and security agencies has visibly increased".
ELN says the Russian leadership should urgently re-evaluate the costs and risks of continuing its more assertive military posture and Western diplomacy should be aimed at persuading Russia to move in this direction.
The other recommendations include "All sides should exercise military and political restraint. All sides must improve military-to-military communication and transparency. To perpetuate a volatile stand-off between a nuclear armed state and a nuclear armed alliance and its partners in the circumstances described in this paper is risky at best. It could prove catastrophic at worst".
ELN says that compared with the pre-March 2014 period, the situation has changed both with regards to the number of relevant incidents, and their gravity.
Concerning the numbers, NATO officials indicated in late October 2014 that this year NATO states have already conducted over 100 intercepts of Russian aircraft, three times more than in 2013.
Between January and September, the NATO Air Policing Mission conducted 68 'hot' identification and interdiction missions along the Lithuanian border alone, and Latvia recorded more than 150 incidents of Russian planes approaching its airspace.
Estonia recorded six violations of its airspace in 2014, as compared to 7 violations overall for the entire period between 2006 and 2013.
High Risk incidents have been defined as those with a high probability of caus-ing casualties or a direct military confrontation between Russia and Western states.
ELN has identified three such cases.
It says "On March 3, 2014 a close encounter occurred between a SAS passenger plane taking off from Copenhagen and a Russian reconnaissance aircraft which did not transmit its position. A collision was apparently avoided thanks only to good visibility and the alertness of the passenger plane pilots. The SAS 737 plane was carrying 132 passengers to Rome. Had these two planes collided with a major loss of civilian life compa-rable to the tragedy of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, the result would almost certainly have been a new round of western sanctions on Russia and increased NATO patrolling in the Baltic Sea but also, and perhaps more importantly, the clas-sification of further un-logged or blind air activity over Europe as a possible threat to life requiring forceful pre-emptive interdiction".
"On September 5, 2014 an Estonian security service operative Eston Kohver was abducted by Russian agents from an Estonian border post, on Estonian, and therefore NATO, territory. He was later taken to Moscow and accused of espio-nage. The incident itself involved communications jamming and the use of smoke grenades, and took place immediately after President Obama's visit to the region and his repetition of security assurances to the Baltic States. Had the incident re-sulted in loss of life there could have been dangerous and uncontrolled escalation".
"Between October 17-27, 2014 a major submarine hunt by Swedish authori-ties was prompted by credible intelligence reports of "underwater activity" in the Stockholm archipelago in Swedish territorial waters. Supreme Commander Gen-eral Sverker Goranson underlined that Sweden was ready to use "armed force" to bring the vessel to the surface if necessary. Russia issued denials and attempted to ridicule Swedish concerns. The major search operation stopped on Oct 24. The Swedish military stated that "foreign underwater activity" had probably taken place, with at least one unidentified vessel involved. This incident represented the biggest anti-submarine operation in Sweden since the Cold War and increased Swedish concerns that more aggressive Russian surveillance and probing operations are under way in breach of international law. Had the submarine been found and force used by Swedish authorities, this may have resulted in casualties and a further Russian military response".
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