Ukraina - US Army flyr også overvåkingsfly - Defense Daily

 

A prototype spy plane is tracking Russian force movements for the US Army

The Airborne Reconnaissance Targeting & Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System aircraft, known as ARTEMIS. (US Army)

ARTEMIS “has both electronic collection and ground scanning radar so it could for example see the movement of tanks in real time, and collect RF [radio frequency] signals emitted by adversaries,”  said Tom Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation. “Its sensors can go hundreds of miles out, so with the route it is flying it can see well into Belarus, Kaliningrad, and perhaps even into the Donbas region."

By   VALERIE INSINNA and ANDREW EVERSDENon February 22, 2022 at 3:05 PM

WASHINGTON: As the world waits on Russia’s next move in its slow-rolling invasion of Ukraine, US military aircraft continue flights over Eastern Europe, searching for changes in Russia’s posture along Ukraine’s border that could give clues about its next moves.

Flying in the region among the US military’s submarine hunting planes and surveillance drones is a novel intelligence-gathering aircraft prototype known as ARTEMIS — a Bombardier Challenger 650 that’s been souped up with military-grade sensors for tracking ground troops, flown on behalf of the US Army by defense contractor Leidos.

ARTEMIS, which stands for Airborne Reconnaissance and Target Exploitation Multi-Mission System, has been conducting operations over Eastern Europe since the beginning of the month, logging 14 sorties between Feb. 1 until Feb. 21, according to Amelia Smith, a hobbyist plane-spotter who has been using flight data to track ISR missions over Europe.

And although the crisis in Ukraine appears to be worsening, it doesn’t seem like ARTEMIS flights will be slowing down anytime soon, as open-source flight tracking sources showed the aircraft flying near Poland’s eastern border earlier today, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian forces would be moving into Ukrainian territory claimed by two would-be independent republics.

Flight data shows that ARTEMIS tends to make the same flight path every day, first taking off from Romania and flying through Slovakia and Hungary, where it can get a quick glimpse of Ukraine. From there, it moves along Poland’s eastern and northern borders — a route that allows ARTEMIS to project its sensors into Belarus, where Russia has staged troops, as well as Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.