Russian Sukhoi 27 fired a missile at a British spy plane in the Black Sea

Video from the channel Canal Conocimiento Militar about Sukhoi Su-27, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 6:21. Language: Spanish. Video type: News.

News about the incident made public by the UK Ministry of Defence on 20 October 2022. On 29 September that year, a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fired an air-to-air missile near a British RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft patrolling over the Black Sea. The missile missed the aircraft.

According to the British report cited in the video, patrols were temporarily suspended and later resumed with Eurofighter Typhoon fighter escort. London attributed the launch to a possible technical fault or an accidental firing. The Russian side merely presented it as a warning. The narrator suggests it may have been a short-range, infrared-guided R-73 missile, fired without intent to shoot the aircraft down.

The video places the episode within the context of British and American intelligence flights over the Black Sea during the war in Ukraine, and the escalation risk such encounters pose. That interpretation is a comment from the video itself and is not part of the British report.