Hungarian Gripens complete interception on NATO Baltic air space mission

Budapest, September 12 (MTI) – Gripen fighters of the Hungarian armed forces completed their first interception operation on a mission to patrol the air space of Baltic NATO members, the defence ministry said on Saturday.

The Gripens received an alert from a NATO air command centre in Germany that an unidentified aircraft entered the protected airspace on Friday, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

They identified the aircraft to be an An-26 military cargo plane and interrupted its journey over the Baltic Sea.

From September this year, Hungary is leading the air space control mission of the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in partnership with Germany under NATO command.

Hungary will fulfil this mission with four JAS-39 Gripen aircraft and more than 80 Hungarian soldiers for four months, the ministry said.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters