There are countless lists of locations most suitable to take selfies, and most of them include places like Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, or the Taj Mahal. We’re pretty confident few, if not none, of those lists include rural Romania.
Yet it is exactly from there that this most spectacular selfie (if not “the” most spectacular of the year) comes from. Well, not exactly from rural Romania, but from above it, where all the action was at the end of March.
Romania is one of the countries that make up NATO’s Eastern flank. That would be the side of the military alliance that is closest to Russia, and presently feels a lot of pressure from the Eastern giant as it tramples over what once was a beautiful Ukraine.
In fact, Romania borders Ukraine and was one of the focal points of NATO’s hardened stance in the region following Russia’s February invasion. The country now houses multinational battlegroups and brigades for land warfare, but also an increased military presence in the air, backed by the German Air Force (Eurofighter Typhoons), the Italian Air Force (also Eurofighter Typhoons), and the U.S. Air Force (USAF), mostly with F-16s. Romania, too, fields F-16s alongside a local variant of the MiG-21.
The selfie we have here, snapped from inside the cockpit of one of the F-16s, shows four of the Fighting Falcons, two deployed by the Americans and the other two by the local air force. When the stunning image was captured on camera, the foursome was flying together over Romanian airspace, at the end of March, during something NATO describes as a multinational effort, separate from air policing missions, meant to maintain “24/7 patrols in the skies along Alliance borders.”
As you can see in the image, which shows the planes flying very close together, the Falcons are armed to the teeth.
Romania is one of the countries that make up NATO’s Eastern flank. That would be the side of the military alliance that is closest to Russia, and presently feels a lot of pressure from the Eastern giant as it tramples over what once was a beautiful Ukraine.
In fact, Romania borders Ukraine and was one of the focal points of NATO’s hardened stance in the region following Russia’s February invasion. The country now houses multinational battlegroups and brigades for land warfare, but also an increased military presence in the air, backed by the German Air Force (Eurofighter Typhoons), the Italian Air Force (also Eurofighter Typhoons), and the U.S. Air Force (USAF), mostly with F-16s. Romania, too, fields F-16s alongside a local variant of the MiG-21.
The selfie we have here, snapped from inside the cockpit of one of the F-16s, shows four of the Fighting Falcons, two deployed by the Americans and the other two by the local air force. When the stunning image was captured on camera, the foursome was flying together over Romanian airspace, at the end of March, during something NATO describes as a multinational effort, separate from air policing missions, meant to maintain “24/7 patrols in the skies along Alliance borders.”
As you can see in the image, which shows the planes flying very close together, the Falcons are armed to the teeth.
Now that's a selfie.
— NATO JFC Naples (@JFC_Naples) March 24, 2022
4?? F-16s, 2?? American ???????? and 2?? Romanian ???????? operate together in Romanian airspace.
This multinational effort means that in addition to air policing missions, #NATO maintains 24/7 patrols in the skies along Alliance borders.@usairforce @MApNRomania pic.twitter.com/iPFUVVhfEy