On Saturday, the Italian website, ItamilRadar, which specializes in monitoring military aircraft, reported that a US Navy Lockheed EP-3E Aries II (reg. 159887) left this morning the Souda Bay base on the NATO island of Crete to carry out a reconnaissance and surveillance mission off the Libyan coast.
In a statement, the website added that this type of mission is not common, but they tracked the presence of such reconnaissance aircraft off Libya’s coast at different times in the past.
Usually, the aircraft operates with the transponder in Mode-S and therefore we cannot track it except in the take-off or landing phases in Souda.
In the past, when it has been possible to track the mission we have seen the aircraft operate both off western Libya (Tripoli area) and eastern Libya (Benghazi).
The aircraft landed in Souda around 11:00 CEST.
On the other hand, the US website FlightAware reported, last week, that a Turkish military cargo aircraft landed in western Libya on Wednesday.
The website stated that the Lockheed C-130H flight (reg. 63-13188) and call code TUAF829, was monitored from Etimesgut Air Base, 15 km west of Ankara, en route to western Libya.
It added that the Turkish aircraft left Libya at 04:39 pm CET.
Turkey continues to send military aircraft to Libya, with more than ten planes landing at the Uqba bin Nafi Airbase in western Libya.
Jamal Shalouf, a Libyan researcher and the Head of the Silphium Foundation for Studies and Research, said that many Turkish military cargo planes, using tracking concealment techniques, have been monitored near Libyan airspace over the recent years
Turkey is believed to control a number of military bases in western Libya, most notably the Al-Watiya airbase. Ankara also recruited more than 18,000 Syrian mercenaries, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Last year, Turkish Defence Minister, Hulusi Akar, stated that the Turkish soldiers and Syrian mercenaries in Libya would remain present to preserve Ankara’s interests.
