A Russian fighter pilot deliberately fired missiles at a UK Royal Air Force surveillance plane in international airspace over the Black Sea last year, the BBC has reported — an incident Russia previously attributed to a " technical malfunction".
The broadcaster said that intercepted communications suggested that the pilot of a Russian Su-27 fighter jet fired on the unarmed British 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.
The British Rivet Joint aircraft has sensors to intercept communications, and its crew would have been able to listen to the incidents in public.
The Russian pilot released an air-to-air missile, which successfully launched but failed to lock on to its target, the BBC reports.
He then released a second missile that fell from the plane - suggesting the weapon either malfunctioned or that the launch was aborted.
British officials have downplayed the incident. Then UK defence secretary Ben Wallace told MPs in October that a Russian jet had "released a missile in the vicinity of'' a British plane and that he had demanded an explanation from Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. He said that Russia had answered that "it was a technical malfunction of the Su-27 fighter."
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"We 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," Wallace said.
He added that the RAF had resumed surveillance patrols over the Black Sea with fighter aircraft escorts.
Asked about Thursday's report, Britain's Ministry of Defence said Wallace had "informed the House of Commons within three weeks of the event occurring, in the interest of transparency and safety."
"Our intent has always been to protect the safety of our operations, avoid unnecessary escalation and inform the public and international community," the ministry said.
"This incident is a stark reminder of the potential consequences of Putin's barbaric invasion of Ukraine."
A spokesman for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Max Blain, said the prime minister was confident Wallace hadn't misled MPs with his statement, adding that "obviously there are limitations on some of the operational detail that can be put into the public domain" for security reasons.
