UK MoD denies tabloid reports RAF ‘ready to shoot down’ Russian planes over Iraq
© Daily Star / The Sunday Times
The initial report was published by The Daily Star and The Sunday Times. It claimed that an “unidentified source” in the British military told the media that Royal Air Force’s Tornado GR4 involved in Operation Shader in Iraq against Islamic State from now on are going to be armed with ASRAAM (AIM-132) short range air-to-air heat-seeking missiles to be prepared to “to shoot down Vladimir Putin’s jets,” The Sunday Times reports.
So far, the RAF jets took off armed with “500lb satellite-guided bombs only,” but as the source in British Defense Ministry put it, “in the last week the situation has changed. We need to respond accordingly.”
British pilots have been allegedly instructed to avoid contact with Russian aircraft.
“The first thing a British pilot will do is to try to avoid a situation where an air-to-air attack is likely to occur — you avoid an area if there is Russian activity,” an unnamed source from the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) told the Sunday Times. “But if a pilot is fired on or believes he is about to be fired on, he can defend himself. We now have a situation where a single pilot, irrespective of nationality, can have a strategic impact on future events.”
“No one knows what the Russians will do next. We don’t know how they will respond if they come into contact with a Western jet,” the source said.
