F-35s train near border with Russia
A pair of Norwegian F-35s were Friday flying back-and-forth over Kirkenes and Varanger area with blue-sky view into the heavily militarised Kola Peninsula.
“There are two of them. The planes are on a standard training mission,” explains Lieutenant Colonel Eivind Byre, spokesperson for the Norwegian Air Force.
They are flying close to the border?
“The planes are well inside Norwegian airspace, in safe distance from the border,” assures Byre in a phone interview with the Barents Observer.
Norwegian fighter jets are normally not training in the skies above the northeast corner close to Russia. Friday's "standard training", however, is the second time this winter a pair of F-35s are training over the Varanger region.
Unlike NATO's newcomer Finland, Norway has self-imposed security and defense restrictions for allied military operations in Finnmark. The restrictions limit non-Norwegian armed fighter jets from flying the airspace close to Russia in order not to provoke a Moscow that has its main naval nuclear assets based along the coast of the Kola Peninsula.
Except in Finnmark has NATO boosted its presence by building multinational battlegroups from the Black Sea in the south to the Baltics and now to Finland in the north. Finland is the member country with the longest border with Russia, 1,340 km.
A main reason for the Norwegian Air Force to fly more often over the Varanger area is to show that Norway has deterrence and is ready to defend all of its airspace amid higher tensions with Russia.
