Poland’s national football team was escorted by F-16 fighter jets as it traveled to a football match in Qatar! The team flew just days after a missile landed in the eastern Polish town of Przewodówon.
The Polish National Football Team’s official Twitter (X) account at that time posted a video showing a pair of F-16 fighter jets flying next to the plane transporting the team. The video was viewed over two million times on X.
The fighter jets were escorting the football team to Poland’s southern border as they headed to Qatar for the World Cup in 2022.
Do południowej granicy Polski eskortowały nas samoloty F16! ✈️ Dziękujemy i pozdrawiamy panów pilotów! 🇵🇱 pic.twitter.com/7WLuM1QrhZ
— Łączy nas piłka (@LaczyNasPilka) November 17, 2022
“We were escorted to the southern border of Poland by F-16 planes! Thank you, and greetings to the pilots!” the tweet accompanying the footage read.
The Polish football team also posted a photo showing one of the F-16 pilots displaying a sign bearing the name of the national squad in his cockpit window.
“When you are a pilot, but also a fan of the Polish national team!” the photo’s caption read.
The fighter jets flew alongside the national team’s plane until it left the country’s airspace. The team arrived safely later in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where it was scheduled to play its World Cup match on November 22.
Poland’s government felt it necessary to take these extraordinary measures to protect the national football team as it traveled to Qatar after a Soviet-era missile landed in the rural town of Przewodow near the border with Ukraine on November 15, which killed two Polish citizens.
Usually, passenger aircraft are escorted by fighter jets in case of threats, including the presence of a bomb or a suspicious object on board, and in the worst-case scenario, like a hijacking attempt.
When faced with such a situation, the pilots inform the nearest Air Traffic Controller (ATC), who scrambles the fighter jets and forces the plane to divert to the nearest safe airport.
An instance of this was witnessed in October in India when an Iranian passenger airliner belonging to Mahan Air traveling from Iran to China entered Indian airspace and requested an emergency landing at the Delhi International Airport because of a potential bomb threat.
While the ATC alerted Delhi Airport for a possible emergency landing, the Iranian airliner was not allowed to land in Delhi and was instead asked to land at the Jaipur or Chandigarh airports, which the pilots of the Iranian airliner surprisingly refused to do and continued their journey to China.
On the other hand, the Indian Air Force (IAF), following the standard operating procedures (SOPs), scrambled its Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jets from Punjab and Rajasthan that intercepted the commercial plane while maintaining a safe distance and escorted it until the aircraft left the Indian borders on the eastern side, only to land in China safely.
However, it is doubtful how effective the escorting fighter jets would be in protecting a passenger aircraft from missile threats, in particular, surface-to-air missiles like the one that landed in Poland during the ongoing Ukraine war.
For such kinds of threats, passenger aircraft can be equipped with onboard missile defense systems. For example, El Al, Israel’s flag carrier, equipped its passenger fleet with decoy flares and lasers to disrupt heat-seeking missiles after one of its planes narrowly escaped two surface-to-air missiles fired by al-Qaeda terrorists in Kenya in 2002.
However, such technology is prohibitively expensive for most airlines, and it is important to bear in mind that El Al relies on government subsidies to pay for it.
One Missile Spurs Public Disagreement
The deadly incident on November 15 came amid a large-scale Russian missile attack across Ukraine, but it is still unclear who fired the missile or where it was launched.
More importantly, this was also the first time that a missile fired during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war landed inside the territory of a NATO member country, sparking fears of further escalation due to Article 5 of NATO’s charter, according to which an attack on one of NATO members is considered an attack on all the member countries.
However, Polish President Andrzej Duda said the missile strike appeared accidental and was likely fired from a Ukrainian air defense system while countering the large-scale Russian bombardment targeted at destroying Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.
“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions, and it is highly probable that one of these missiles, unfortunately, fell on Polish territory,” said President Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland,” he said.
#BREAKING: Footage from the scene of the explosions in the village of Przéwodow, Poland. The fragments found at the site resemble parts from an S-300 anti-aircraft missile, apparently fired by Ukrainian air defense systems. pic.twitter.com/xFo3X6rWK3
— Denis Rogatyuk (@DenisRogatyuk) November 15, 2022
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged disputed findings and requested that his officials be given access to the blast site for further investigation.
Zelensky told reporters he had “no doubts” about a report he received from his military commanders “that it wasn’t our missile or our missile strike.” He added that Ukrainian officials should have access to the site and participate in the investigation.
“Let’s say openly, if, God forbid, some remnant (of Ukraine’s air defenses) killed a person, these people, then we need to apologize,” Zelensky said. “But first, there needs to be a probe and access — we want to get the data you have,” he said.
Zelensky’s remarks have reportedly aggravated at least one diplomat from a NATO country in Kyiv, who told the Financial Times: “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine, and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”
Even the United States has been pushing back against Zelensky’s assertion that the missile was not Ukrainian.
Three anonymous US officials told the Associated Press that initial findings suggest that Ukrainian forces fired the missile at an incoming Russian missile during a barrage of missile attacks on Western Ukraine.
BREAKING: Biden says the missile that hit Poland is unlikely to have come from Russia pic.twitter.com/mWaHlBuqgl
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 16, 2022
In addition, US President Biden said: “There is preliminary information that contests that. I don’t want to say that until we completely investigate it, but it is unlikely that it was fired from Russia in the lines of the trajectory, but we’ll see.”
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