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March 23, 2015

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PROVOCATION - New Greek-Turkish dogfight over the Aegean

credit Defencenet
According to the National Defence General Staff, six Turkish F-16 fighter jets violated Greek airspace at 11:04 (local time) on Monday between the islands of Lesvos and Chios (just before flying over the Fournon islands), without having submitted a flight plan.

Greek F-16 fighter jets immediately took off from the island of Skyros and put missile firing parameters -long-range AIM-120 (BVR)- against the Turkish fighters. (On account of the low availability of Mirage 2000-5 and F-4E Peace Icarus, the F-16 took off from Skyros.)

When the Turkish fighters realized that the Greek planes had placed a trapped signal on them they immediately split into formations of four and two. At 11:27 the four fighter jets flew to 25,000 feet and the other two planes flew at 12,000 feet (or just a bit before the Greek airplanes approached them carrying air-to-air short range missiles). It was a classic move by Turkey to provide assistance to both its fighters from the Greek jets.

At 11:30 and after being pursued by Greek fighter jets, the Turkish planes then left Greek airspace flying over south of the island of Samos after being detected by Greek F-16 fighter jets.

Monday's incident is just one of many violations from Turkish jets over the past few days. It has become a daily habit to read about Turkish violations and continuous dogfights over the Aegean.

For instance, last Thursday and Friday a whopping 103 violations were recorded but luckily each incident was quickly intercepted by Greek fighter planes. Quite interestingly, last week's incidences were taken to heart from Ankara to the point that the Turkish General Staff issued a statement speaking of "harassment" on the part of Greece (against its planes) in what it termed "international air ... space", on account of an entrapment radar. Ankara went as far as to complain that Greek fighters harassed Turkish F- 16 five times (for 13 minutes and 50 seconds), with an entrapment radar, and said that all they were doing was merely conducting a training flight in international airspace. They did, however, admit that the Turkish F-16s had also locked the Greek fighters.

Source: Defencenet



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