Polish and Russian fighters on Tuesday practiced coordinated intercepts of a mock hijacked airplane near their common border as part of Vigilant Skies 2011, the first-ever NATO-Russia counterterrorism air exercise. In the exercise scenario, a Polish aircraft taking off from Krakow acted as the “renegade” platform. Polish fighters intercepted it before handing it over to Russian fighters that escorted it back to Poland for landing. On Wednesday, Turkish and Russian fighters will carry out similar coordinated intercepts of a Turkish “renegade” aircraft over the Black Sea. Vigilant Skies falls under the NATO-Russia Council Cooperative Airspace Initiative that is designed to prevent terrorist attacks using civilian aircraft as weapons, as happened on 9/11. The United States and Russia completed a similar air exercise last August over the Pacific near Alaska and the Russian Far East. (NATO release) (See also Associated Press report and Deutsche Welle report.)
Due to the prolonged delay in deliveries of the Tech Refresh 3 version of the F-35 fighter, Denmark is pulling six of its TR-2-configured F-35 jets stationed in the U.S. back to home base in order to consolidate aircraft and get better training for its pilots and maintainers, the Danish…