Kyiv Post

NATO air forces have beefed up surveillance of the Atlantic Alliance’s southeastern frontier in recent weeks with the rare deployment of E-3A Sentry AWACS surveillance aircraft to airspace over eastern Romania.

The most recent sortie, on Wednesday, May 8, probably missed watching a major Russian missile strike on Ukraine in real-time by a matter of hours.

The first-ever flight by an E-3A Sentry AWACS into airspace over southern Romania since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 took place on April 3, Kyiv Post research of open-source flight tracking platforms like FlightRadar showed.

Subsequent sorties were flown by the $227 million aircraft crammed with radar, listening, and communications gear into that airspace on May 2 and May 8, open-source data showed. According to NATO doctrine, the Sentry’s primary mission is to serve as a powerful “eyes in the sky” platform and airborne command post that monitors airspace to identify all aircraft, including both friendly and possibly hostile aircraft, and to enable efficient defenses and attacks by mission commanders flying NATO combat aircraft.

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