French fighter jets join the Baltic mission

Shortly after dawn on a recent weekday morning four Mirage 2000 fighter jets took off from their French military base. They were heading on a 1,600-kilometre trip to the Siauliai air base in Lithuania, where on November 30th France (along with Belgium) took over from Italy for a four-month NATO air-policing operation. Accompanying them on the journey was a French air-to-air refuelling tanker, which left the same morning from Istres, near Marseille. Mid-flight, with the fighter jet’s nose hovering just 10m from the tanker’s wing tip, the French aircraft released its refuelling hose for the Mirage to hook on to and fill up. Later, over the Baltic Sea, the tanker took up a holding pattern to do the same for four Finnish F/A-18 fighter jets, newly patrolling the region under the banner of NATO, which Finland joined this year.