On 1 April, the first day that the Lockheed-Martin F-35A Lightning II of the Royal Danish Air Force was on Quick Reaction Alert duty, the new combat jets already made a live-weapons intercept of a Russian reconnaissance and intelligence gathering plane over the Baltic Sea, the Danish Air Force reports.
Often dubbed “spy planes” the Russian Ilyushin IL-20 Coot-A was lingering towards Danish aerospace at the end of last week. Officially declared ready for QRA duty as of the first of April, Danish F-35s were apparently already up to the task.
Strategically located Bornholm
The Danish air force pilots followed the Coot, which is the NATO codename for this type of Russian aircraft, when it was relatively close to Bornholm. This is a strategically located island of Denmark in the Baltic Sea. During the entire flight the Russian aircraft stayed within international aerospace. These type of live-weapons intercepts haven been common in Europe ever since the end of World War II.
Skrydstrup Air Base
Since 2006 all Danish Air Force fighter jets are based at Skrydstrup on the Danish mainland. Here the task by the F-16s from the 1970s are slowly taken over by the new F-35s. The Royal Danish Air Force has 27 of the type on order, with as many as 17 delivered by January of this year. | © 2025 Marcel Burger, nordicreporter.com. Press photo of the RDAF F-35 interception of the Russian IL-20 by Flyvevåbnet