NATO fighter jets policing over eastern Europe as part of the Baltic air policing mission intercepted 22 Russian aircraft over a week’s time at the end of July.
The Financial Times reported that two of the instances represented the largest intercepts over eastern Europe in the last year and a half, during which time tensions between NATO and Russia have increased due to Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
What’s more, emergency deployments of NATO jets over Europe have reached their highest frequency—250 times this year, 120 of which were conducted by the Baltic air policing mission—since the end of the Cold War.
"In the last year, Russia’s air activity close to NATO borders has increased in quantity and complexity," a NATO official explained. "Russian aircraft often fly without their transponders switched on, without filing flights plans and without communicating with air traffic authorities."
When powered on, transponders let civilian aviation authorities swiftly determine the location of an aircraft.
According to a ruling from the European Air Safety Agency earlier this year, Russia’s flight practices pose "high risk" to civil aviation. Due to Russia’s heightened action in the air, NATO has doubled the size of the decade-old Baltic air policing mission this year.
The United States has especially clashed with Russia in international airspace in recent months. In April, a Russian fighter jet nearly collided with a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea in what the Pentagon dubbed an "unsafe and unprofessional" intercept. A similar incident occurred over the Black Sea the following month.
In recent weeks, two high-ranking Pentagon generals tapped by President Obama to hold top posts at the Department of Defense have named Russia as the most significant threat to the United States.