Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoons along with the British military have arrived in Kiev to participate in the parade marking the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, the embassy in the country said on Saturday.
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“UK military in #Ukraine for the Independence Day parade. Don’t miss your chance to see @TheRoyalLancers marching, the virtuoso @BAB_Colchester playing and the magnificent Typhoon fighters @RoyalAirForce flying over #Kyiv,” the diplomatic mission tweeted.
It added that the British military came to show the country’s “support and friendship both on the ground and in the skies.”
Earlier in July, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston told The Telegraph that the British Royal Air Force may revert to Cold War-era tactics, including dispersing fighter jets from their bases to civilian airfields, to counter alleged Russian missile threat.
“We’ll be re-learning how to disperse… But instead of two bases, if all my Typhoons [fighter jets] were on 12 bases, that’s a harder target… We should look at this as a national challenge and look at the wealth of airstrips we have in the UK… It sounds a bit Cold War-ey, but we have a pressing requirement to remember how to do it,” Wigston said.
Russia’s new missile and air defense systems as well as its willingness to use force prompted the country to include the training of Cold War practices in the multi-year Agile Stance exercises, whose launch is planned for 2022, the air chief added.
If Russia moves its arsenal of cutting-edge cruise missiles to Kaliningrad, this would be a “step up the ladder of escalation,” as the UK infrastructure would be within their reach, according to Wigston.
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The UK, he went on, needs to invest in air defense systems, as the country has not “kept pace” due to “our strategic circumstances and the fact we were operating under a US umbrella.”
Eurofighter Typhoon
The Eurofighter Typhoon is a four-nation program, undertaken by Munich, Germany-based Eurofighter GmbH, and wholly-owned by BAE Systems of the UK, Alenia Aeronautica of Italy, the EADS Deutschland (formerly DaimlerChrysler) and EADS Spain (formerly CASA) — both of which are managed by Airbus Military.
The Eurofighter Typhoon is a delta-wing, beyond-visual-range, close air fighter jet, with exceptional capabilities of conducting air to air and air to ground attacks.
The jet is also capable of maintaining speeds of over Mach 1 without using the afterburner. It has two Eurojet EJ 200 engines, each of which is capable of providing a thrust of 90kN in full reheat and 60kN in dry power mode.
Old Tensions
Earlier Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Andrei Kelin had stated that London’s actions during the incident with the UK destroyer Defender could lead to an armed confrontation between two nations.
“The nightmare is that they try to bolster a political stance with a military provocation that could definitely bring us to a serious military incident, which, in essence, the head of the UK joint chiefs of staff acknowledged just yesterday evening,” Kelin told YouTube channel Solovyov LIVE.
Tensions escalated between Moscow and London when British destroyer Defender allegedly crossed the Russian border and entered Russian waters three kilometers away in the area of Cape Fiolent in Crimea.
After that, a Russian border patrol ship carried out warning firing, and the Su-24M aircraft carried out a “warning bombing” along the path of the destroyer.
With Inputs From Sputnik News Agency
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