French NATO fighters perform Saaremaa low flyover
French Air Force (Armée de l'Air Française) Mirage 2000-5 jets performed low-altitude flights above the Kaali meteorite crater on Saaremaa Sunday.
The flight coincided with a NATO-organized cycle tour of Estonia which started from Tartu on Saturday.
The cyclists, largely consisting personnel stationed with the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) Battlegroup in Tapa, were on their Saaremaa leg of the journey Saturday. The French jets made the considerably shorter hop from Ämari air base.
The overflight took place at 4.25 p.m. Sunday, and followed a low-altitude training exercise using the same type of aircraft, flying from the same base, earlier this week, and a display overflight of Tallinn on Bastille Day in July.
The Dassault Mirage 2000-5 is a multirole, single-engine fighter and part of the Mirage dynasty of French fast jets. The French air force planes have been based at Ämari, southwest of Tallinn, since spring as part of the standard rotation which NATO air policing brings.
The NATO eFP Battlegroup based at Tapa, east of Tallinn, arose from the 2016 Warsaw Summit and has been a fact since early 2017. It is British-led, with support provided by, currently, Danish personnel, and in the past from France and Belgium, all on a rotational basis.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
