MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/. A NATO reconnaissance aircraft circled over neutral waters in the southern part of the Black Sea for eight and a half hours, a source in the EU air traffic control services told TASS.

"A NATO Bombardier Artemis II reconnaissance aircraft began its flight around 8:40 a.m. Moscow time (5:40 a.m. GMT) taking off from its base aerodrome in Constanta, Romania, and is only now preparing to land after having flown back and forth over the Black Sea from west to east and back the entire time," the source said. He noted that the aircraft maintained an altitude of about 12.5 km and did not use the flight corridors established for civil aviation. Earlier, the source also told TASS that in July, the Bombardier Artemis II, designed to carry out reconnaissance missions, including the use of equipment for signal processing, interception, and data decryption, spent a record nine hours in the air.

Last night, the RQ-4D Phoenix, a strategic NATO reconnaissance drone operated by the Italian Air Force, also conducted a circular flight over the southern part of the Black Sea. It took off from the Naval Air Station (NAS) Sigonella, a joint US Navy and Italian Air Force installation located in eastern Sicily, and returned after several circuits.

The aircraft, the EU source said, navigated at an altitude of over 17 km and did not enter the airspace of any of the coastal countries, with the exception of Bulgaria, through which it passed to begin its flight over the sea. "Its flight path generally followed the same route taken by the Bombardier Challenger 650 Artemis II," the source noted.