An aircraft of the U.S. Air Force has conducted a reconnaissance flight over the Black Sea off the coast of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.
The Boeing RC-135V reconnaissance aircraft tail No.64-14846 call sign MITE21 took off from the Souda Bay airbase in Greece's Crete at 08:35 Moscow time. Within 10 minutes, it arrived in the Black Sea area and began a reconnaissance flight off the coast of Crimea, which lasted about three hours, Radio Liberty's Krym Realii reported with reference to Russian media.
As UNIAN reported earlier, U.S. Air Force deployed a Boeing RC-135V reconnaissance aircraft to patrol off the coast of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula and the Black Sea coast of the Russian Federation near Novorossiysk.
08:35 мск.
— PlaneRadar (@ua4wiy_) February 18, 2019
Самолёт радиоэлектронной разведки, ВВС США🇺🇸 , #Boeing RC-135V , бортовой номер 64-14846 , позывной #MITE21, взлетел с авиабазы Суда бэй о. Крит🇬🇷.#RC135#USAF#RC135Vpic.twitter.com/WyPjtLXw5n
UNIAN memo. The Boeing RC-135 is a family of large reconnaissance aircraft built by Boeing and modified by a number of companies, including General Dynamics, Lockheed, LTV, E-Systems, and L3 Technologies, and used by the U.S. Air Force and UK's Royal Air Force to support theater and national level intelligence consumers with near real-time on-scene collection, analysis and dissemination capabilities. Based on the C-135 Stratolifter airframe, various types of RC-135s have been in service since 1961.