According to a report on MailOnline, a United States ‘spy plane’ Boeing OC-135B has made an emergency landing in eastern Russia. The surveillance aircraft was flying a mission over Siberia as allowed under the Treaty on Open Skies when it reported a problem with its landing gear. Under the treaty, signatories are allowed to overfly the skies of each other gathering information about military forces and activities of concern to them.
Though the unarmed plane made an emergency landing at Khabarovsk airport, a military source in Russia has questioned whether the technical glitch was genuine,.
The American military aircraft had left after a stopover in Ulan-Ude, in the Republic of Buryatia, and was due to fly north to Yakutsk, capital of Siberia’s diamond-rich Sakha Republic.
Instead, after take-off the crew noticed the problem and the Boeing went east and made a landing 1,660 miles away in Khabarovsk.
An airport official confirmed Wednesday’s emergency landing in the city, close to the Chinese border, repoted MailOnline.
‘A foreign aircraft made a forced landing in Khabarovsk. All emergency ground services have arrived on site. The flight landed safely at 3pm local time,’ said a statement.
Earlier, the Russian Defence Ministry’s Nuclear Risk Reduction Centre had announced the US Boeing OC-135B aircraft’s observation flight over Russian territory between July 25 and 30.
An army source suggested the malfunctioning was ‘not coincidental’, and perhaps related to recent military exercises in the area.
‘They were due to go direct from Ulan-Ude north-northeast to Yakutsk,’ said the unnamed source, as reported by The Siberian Times.
‘Just imagine the kind of loop they needed to make to request the landing at approximately the same distance, but to the east?’
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Sourced from MailOnline, Featured image courtesy:en.wikipedia.org
