Another week, another look at pretty Russian planes of yesteryear. From the Nato mission in the Baltics, where several groups of Russian aircraft strayed close to Estonia,Lithuania and Latvia. There were reports of four Su-27 Flankers, an A50 Mainstay, a Tu-22 Backfire and an AN-26 cargo plane. RAF Typhoons swooped in, of course, to save the day. Good thing this wasn't Switzerland.



The Telegraph article with pics

I can see there are no missiles on the Flankers so it's very obviously just saber rattling.

The second picture in the article shows one Flanker carrying eight missiles. Whether or not this is a stock photo, or actually one from the mentioned mission, is unclear.

The caption under the second picture says SU25 Flanker oops.

Silly journalists. What else would you expect?

Those flankers are so sexy!

The Finnish F18s were so loaded with missiles it looked like when I was a kid and put everything in the box on my plastic models. At least we might get some proper armament on the Gripen now.

-C-