RAF fighter pilots have ‘nerve-wracking’ encounter with 154ft Russian jets

Two RAF fighter pilots have revealed the tense moment when they discovered that a suspicious unidentified aircraft over the Middle East was one of Russia’s biggest military jets.

The Typhoon aces tracked the transport aircraft while on a sortie to identify any insurgent activity near a US military base in Jordan which had been hit with a drone launched by a militia group.

They monitored the hulking Ilyushin Il-76, given the codename ‘Candid’ by NATO, to keep it away from the base before identifying another identical armoured Russian jet in a ‘game changer.’

Speaking about the incident afterwards, one of the pilots, named as Flt Lt Josh, says: ‘We don’t want the Russian military aircraft to get too close as it could get very dangerous, there is risk of escalation.’