RAF Sentinel aircraft returns from the Middle East.
A Royal Air Force Sentinel R1 aircraft based
at RAF Waddington, was today welcomed back following the latest successful
mission supporting the coalition in the fight against Daesh in the Middle East.
The 5 (Army Cooperation) Squadron aircraft
landed today after eight weeks away where the crew have been supporting
coalition operations by supplying information that ensures the strikes carried
out by the RAF and other coalition aircraft are accurate.
Wing Commander Chris Melville the
officer commanding 5 Squadron said: “This has been a highly successful deployment by
the Squadron and we continue to contribute to the success of the mission. ”. He
added: “It is always difficult to recognise the work of my Squadron due to the sensitive
nature of it, but today is an opportunity to publically congratulate them on a
job well done.”
During this tour the Iraqi Security
forces, together with their coalition allies in the air and on the ground, have
successfully recaptured the Iraqi city of Mosul with the 5 Squadron Sentinel playing
an important part in the gathering of information to support the ground
campaign.
The Sentinel crew used the aircraft’s
powerful radar to identify and track numerous targets over great distances,
passing the information in near real time to friendly forces. The information gathered was also used by intelligence
specialists to conduct in-depth forensic analysis of the data to generate
intelligence products that are passed to commanders and decision makers
enabling them to plan future operations.
Today’s returning Sentinel aircraft has
been deployed in support of operations for two months and during that time was
airborne for 235 hours, or the equivalent of nearly 10 days, with the typical
sortie lasting for ten hours. During
this time the aircraft flew approximately 4200 miles.
Squadron Leader Tom a member of the crew said, ‘We
are very proud of the work that we collectively do as a Squadron here. It gives the crews immense satisfaction to
see the end product of their efforts and the effect of this on current
operations.’
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