Norway, 10-11 Mar 2026 - Il-20M Coot, transponder off

Royal Norwegian Air Force F-35A Lightning IIs intercepted a Russian Il-20M "Coot" reconnaissance aircraft on two consecutive days, March 10 and 11, 2026, while NATO's Exercise Cold Response 2026 was underway in northern Norway. On 10 March, the aircraft was identified and shadowed by two F-35s in international airspace off Finnmark before it turned north from Sørøya and returned toward the Kola Peninsula around midday. On 11 March, an Il-20M returned flying with its transponder switched off. Two F-35s on Quick Reaction Alert duty scrambled from Evenes Air Station at 09:30 local time (08:30 UTC), Defense News reported.

Of the seven Il-20 intercepts in AirVeto's archive, this is the only one off Norway's Arctic coast. The other six are filed under Poland or Finland, from the December 2025 Polish intercept to the September 3 Baltic Sea identification, and include Finland's August airspace violation.

The second day's shadow ran the length of Norway's northern coast

After visually identifying the aircraft on 11 March, the F-35s shadowed it along the Norwegian coast before it turned northwards off Vesterålen, then flew south twice more, reaching as far as Lofoten, before returning to the Kola Peninsula around 13:30 local time (12:30 UTC). The Norwegian Armed Forces called the event "routine and expected" during large exercises, Defense News reported.

The Il-20M is a Russian reconnaissance aircraft

The Il-20M "Coot" is a specialised reconnaissance and electronic-intelligence platform carrying side-looking airborne radar, infrared and optical sensors, and satellite communications equipment, used to detect and locate ground, maritime and aerial emissions. Russian Il-20s fly regularly in international airspace over the Baltic region with transponders off. The type was also intercepted three times in less than a week within the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone in August 2025, during a comparable period of allied exercises (Northern Edge 2025) - the same pattern of appearing during major NATO drills repeating in the Cold Response case.

Cold Response 2026 brought together 32,500 participants, 25,000 of them training in Norway and 7,500 in Finland, The Aviationist reported.

This kind of scramble is a QRA (Quick Reaction Alert) mission. Norwegian pilots have averaged 38 of them a year against unidentified Russian aircraft since 2022, Defense News reported.

Wind conditions off Finnmark

At 08:00 UTC on 11 March, close to the start of the second-day intercept window, AirVeto's wind-model data for the international airspace off Finnmark put the flow at 3,000 meters, the incident's plotted altitude, at 34 km/h and pushed toward the east-southeast. Open-Meteo's model returned no usable reading at 2,000 meters for this location and date; the 3,000 meter level is the value used here.

This reconstruction draws on the Norwegian Armed Forces' account of the intercept, reporting by The Aviationist and Defense News, and AirVeto's wind-model data for 08:00 UTC on March 11, 2026. How the model is built and where it is reliable is on the methodology page. A full archive of drone and airspace incidents across the EU's eastern border is at the incident archive.