Air missions & intercepts on Russian borders Jan-Aug 2020
In light of the frequent air missions carried out by the USAF and USN recently, an update is provided connected to my previous article back in May on statistics for 2019 and open source coverage of air reconnaissance & intel gathering air missions for April and May 2020. Emotions run high on social media on both sides, but it is nevertheless interesting to take a cold look at the official figures given by the Russian MoD in their weekly infographics.
It is almost impossible to compare the figures below with the scarce information sources made publicly available by the USAF, USN and NATO. I can only obtain some tidbits of data from open source aviation monitoring sites on Twitter, which is comprehensive but still doesn't quite tell the whole story.
Air reconnaissance mission statistics as reported by Russian MoD
More on this later on but please note the above graph only refers to air reconnaissance and intelligence gathering missions from U.S., NATO and non-NATO states. Significant by its omission are statistics on strategic bomber missions carried in proximity to Russian borders.
Combined figures for 2019 and 2020 (January to August) * 2 missing monthly reporting information , ** one missing reporting information in a given year = incomplete data for the month.
To be updated... TBC