NATO exercises Air Defender23 have begun- one faux pas and WWIII will be upon us
The BBC and Euronews this morning were featuring the start of Europe’s largest ever air force exercises for which newly arrived U.S. fighter jets, bombers and mid-air refueling planes form the central unifying contingent in the more than 200 participating aircraft.
We are told Germany is the center of the air operations and that the purpose of the exercises is purely defensive, to demonstrate to Russia what awaits it if it should decide to attack a NATO member state.
Meanwhile, in alternative media some have raised the possibility that Air Defender 23 will be used as a cover for possible penetration of Ukrainian air space by F-16s said to be piloted by Ukrainians. This, they say, would repeat the way NATO naval exercises in the summer of 2022 were used to provide cover for the underwater operations that put in place explosives at the sea floor which destroyed Nord Stream 1 pipelines by deferred command in September.
Russian media are for the moment silent about any such threat of F-16s entering the war zone. However, it is fairly clear from the overall posture of the Russian military that any such incursions will prompt swift Russian countermeasures, meaning the shooting down of airplanes violating the de facto no fly rules in place.
Accordingly, we may be entering the most dangerous East-West confrontation since the Allied airlift to Berlin at the outset of the first Cold War
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023