French Air Force mission this morning to the Black Sea coast.
A pair of Dassault Rafale aircraft took off from the Saint Dizier base at 04:45 CET and headed towards eastern Romania supported during the flight by two tankers departed from Istres AB, a Boeing C-135FR (reg. 739) and an Airbus A330MRTT (reg. F-UJCJ).
The two French fighters provided escort to a Boeing E-3CF (reg. 204) which took off from Avord AB and orbited somewhere on the Romanian coast (we do not have the ADS-B track of that part of the mission) for about 3 hours. Meanwhile, the two Rafale orbited the coast, over Costanta, providing an indirect escort to the AWACS
This is not the first time we have tracked a French mission with assets departed directly from France, but it is the first time we have observed such a large deployment of forces.
Nice information, thanks. There’s support from throughout Nato but some countries appear to be providing more support visibly on the radar with transponders turned on, than others. I’ve seen the US, the UK but also Germany, the Netherlands and even Sweden with recon up regularly. I’ve seen aircraft up there with the ‘Nato’ mark but no country mentioned, also, as well as Turkish recon on a regular basis. My apologies for any countries I failed to mention.