PARIS — France says a Russian S-400 air-defense system targeted a French maritime patrol flight over the Baltic Sea this week in what the country’s Armed Forces Minister Sébastian Lecornu called an “unacceptable” act of aggression.
A French Atlantique 2 aircraft patrolling international airspace over the Baltic as part of a NATO mission was targeted by the fire-control system of the S-400 ground-to-air missile system in the night of Wednesday to Thursday, Lecornu said in a post on X.
“This aggressive Russian action is unacceptable,” Lecornu said. “Our armed forces will continue to act to defend freedom of navigation in international air and maritime spaces.”
NATO this week kicked off Baltic Sentry, a mission to protect critical infrastructure in the region following damage to undersea cables between Estonia and Finland in December. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday that Russia’s hostile actions against members of the alliance are accelerating, including through cyberattacks, sabotage and hybrid warfare.
Russia has been accused by the Baltic countries of large-scale jamming of GPS navigation, creating disruption for civilian aviation. Some military analysts have suggested Russia may step up sabotage efforts and hybrid warfare as it faces growing losses and difficulties on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Electro-magnetic interference of aircraft is widespread and goes “far beyond” European borders, affecting all types of air traffic, and “is something that is quite serious,” Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Christopher Cavoli said in a press conference in Brussels on Thursday, responding to a question about jamming and targeting of the French aircraft. He declined to comment on the specific incident.
NATO interceptions of Russian military aircraft approaching allied airspace, most of which take place over the Baltic, were little changed in 2024 from a year earlier, according to information from Allied Air Command provided to Defense News. NATO jets typically scrambled around 300 times a year in response to Russian activity, based on data for the past five years, except for a jump to more than 500 intercepts in 2022.
France’s Atlantique 2 maritime patroller is a two-engine propeller aircraft specialized in anti-submarine warfare, with equipment including a magnetic anomaly detector, and 14-hour flight endurances. The French Navy has 22 of the aircraft, receiving the first unit in 1989, with most of the fleet being modernized starting in 2013 through to 2025.
Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to correct the year when the Atlantique aircraft was first received by the French military, 1989.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
