The Swedish website, Flightradar24 monitored a new reconnaissance and surveillance mission for a British Royal Air Force Boeing RC-135W, which took off from Souda Bay base on the NATO island of Crete.
The website indicated in the flight data that it was carried out at approximately 08:07 CEST, and carried out the first part of the mission off eastern Libya. The British aircraft then moved towards the coast of western Libya.
In April, the Italian website, ItamilRadar reported that a US Navy Lockheed EP-3E Aries II (reg. 159887) left the Souda Bay base to carry out a reconnaissance and surveillance mission off the Libyan coast.
The website pointed out that this type of mission is uncommon, but has 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),” it stated..
Notably, the US website FlightAware reported, that a Turkish military cargo aircraft landed in western Libya, in April.
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.
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.
