The United States is increasingly demonstrating its unwillingness to deal with European security issues, and even Trump’s statement about the White House’s desire to reduce its role in NATO structures. Therefore, the question of how dependent Europe is on the United States in all segments of what is necessary for the conduct of hostilities is more acute than ever.
Against this background, a new publication from an authoritative IISS (International Institute for Strategic Studies), which covers the issue of reconnaissance aviation, which the United States and European countries currently have.
The experience of the full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine has shown not only how important it is to receive timely information about the aggressor’s intentions and plan your actions on the battlefield accordingly. But also that reconnaissance aviation, manned and unmanned, still retains its importance in modern warfare as one of the tools for obtaining information about the enemy.
Based on current data, the United States currently has as many as 17 RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft, which can conduct reconnaissance in two planes – electronic reconnaissance (ELINT) and communications reconnaissance (COMINT).
Data on the power of the onboard equipment of these aircraft are not disclosed in the public domain, but instead there is a flight range indicator – approximately 5.5 thousand kilometers, that is, if necessary, the RC-135 Rivet Joint can conduct long-term flights to collect the necessary information.
If we take data on European countries, then only the United Kingdom has its long-range reconnaissance aircraft (three RC-135 Rivet Joint). This is an important detail, because if we summarize the data on the European segment of NATO, given in the table above, we get 19 reconnaissance aircraft against 17 in the United States, but then the question arises not only about the quantitative, but also the qualitative ratio as well.
As for unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, the situation looks like this – NATO forces in Europe have at their disposal five long-range reconnaissance UAVs of the RQ-4D Phoenix type, which have a radius and flight duration of up to 5500 kilometers and 24 hours, respectively, and can rise to an altitude of up to 16 kilometers.
At first glance, it may seem that with all the above data, European countries have no reason to worry about their own capabilities in the segment of reconnaissance aviation. But here the authors of the IISS emphasize that the experience of the Russian war against Ukraine has shown the importance of not only technology, but also “mass”, that is, the amount of available equipment of all types.
Earlier, News Hub also wrote that Europe estimated how many years it would take for a full-fledged replacement of the United States to defend against the Russian Federation.
