New details have emerged about the incident over the Black Sea that took place in September 2022, when a Russian fighter jet fired two missiles at a British Royal Air Force reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace. This was no accident – the Su-27 pilot understood the order from the ground.
Source. This was reported by the BBC.
In 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the incident was caused by a technical malfunction and apologized.
However, now three senior sources in Western defense departments have told the BBC that intercepted conversations between Russian pilots indicate a different development.
The crew of the Royal Air Force reconnaissance aircraft, which consisted of about 30 military personnel, was conducting a surveillance mission over the Black Sea on September 29, 2022, when it encountered two Russian Su-27 fighters.
According to intercepted communications, one of the Russian pilots thought he had been given permission to attack the British aircraft after receiving a command from a Russian ground station that could be interpreted in two ways.
However, the pilot of the second Su-27 understood the order differently, and when his partner fired the missile, he was outraged and cursed.
The British authorities do not plan to make the details of the interception public and do not explain why they have so far pretended to believe Russia's official version.
According to one of the BBC's sources, the Russian ground controller's command to the Su-27 pilots was "you have a target."
There was no direct instruction to hit the target, but the pilot interpreted the dispatcher's words in this way.
The intercept shows the pilot of the second machine swearing at his colleague and shouting that there was no command to fire.
However, despite this, the first pilot fired another missile.
According to British sources in the Ministry of Defense, the second missile simply fell off the wing, indicating either that it was malfunctioning or that its launch had been interrupted.
Three weeks after the incident, in October 2022, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that London accepts the Russian version of the technical malfunction.
It is also known that US intelligence did not initially consider the incident over the Black Sea to be a technical malfunction and warned its British counterparts about it.