For the second time in four days, Polish fighters have been scrambled to meet a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea. On Thursday afternoon, 3 September 2026, the four-engined turboprop was intercepted roughly 40 kilometres north of Ustka, the resort town on Poland’s central Baltic coast, flying with its identification equipment switched off.

Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz broke the news on X shortly after the event. His post repeated the phrase that has become a fixture of these announcements, that there was no violation of Polish airspace, but added a sharper edge than usual: an aircraft this size, flying dark, “posed a threat to civilian aviation.”

The last Il-20 intercept came on Monday, 31 August, about 30 kilometres north of Łeba, a little further east along the same coastline. Polish defence outlet MILMAG counted Thursday’s scramble as the tenth Il-20M interception near Poland’s borders this year. What was a rare event in 2025 has become a near-weekly routine.

What the ministry said

Kosiniak-Kamysz’s statement was short and, by now, formulaic. Translated from the Polish, it reads in full: another incident over the Baltic involving a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft; 40 kilometres north of Ustka, our fighters intercepted a Russian aircraft that had no identification devices switched on and posed a threat to civil aviation; there was no violation of Polish airspace.

The ministry did not say which fighters flew the intercept, nor from which base. Poland’s quick reaction alert is carried largely by its F-16C/D Block 52+ Jastrząb fleet, and the Baltic coast is also covered by NATO allies rotating through the region. Neither Warsaw nor the Operational Command of the Armed Forces (DORSZ) had published further detail by Thursday evening.

Second scramble in four days

Thursday’s intercept follows Monday’s interception 30 kilometres north of Łeba, which we covered at the time. Then, as now, the Il-20 remained in international airspace, and then, as now, Kosiniak-Kamysz framed the flight as Russia testing Poland’s deterrence and air defence system.

The pattern goes back through the summer. On 14 July, a pair of Polish fighters met an Il-20 about 30 kilometres off Ustka, an event the minister then called the first Russian attempt in a long time to approach Poland’s maritime border. On 15 July, two Su-30SM2 fighters from the Kaliningrad region approached a Polish air defence exercise. On 31 July, another Il-20 flew the Baltic without a flight plan and with its transponder off. Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi tallied nine interception operations involving Russian military aircraft by the end of August; MILMAG’s count of ten Il-20M intercepts as of Thursday points the same way.

The geography explains a lot. Kaliningrad, Russia’s exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania, is cut off from the Russian mainland by NATO territory. Military aircraft moving between the two, or patrolling the approaches to the exclave, route over the Baltic, along a corridor that runs past the Polish coast. An Il-20 loitering off Ustka or Łeba is well placed to listen to radars and radios across northern Poland, and to observe how quickly the alert fighters arrive.

Why a switched-off transponder matters

The Il-20 is not a fighter, it fires nothing, and it stayed in international airspace. So why the language about a threat to civilian aviation?

The Baltic is busy. Airliners crossing between Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltic states and Germany share the sky with these flights. A civil aircraft’s transponder broadcasts its identity, altitude and position, which is what allows air traffic controllers and other aircraft’s collision avoidance systems to see it. A large aircraft flying with that equipment off, and without a filed flight plan, is a blind spot in a crowded piece of airspace. Controllers may see a primary radar return with no label; airliners’ TCAS systems see nothing at all.

That is why NATO air policing exists. The intercept itself is a well-rehearsed procedure: the fighters close in, identify the aircraft visually and with their sensors, establish that it is what the radar thinks it is, and escort it until it turns away. As Polish daily Rzeczpospolita noted in its coverage of Thursday’s event, pilots may manoeuvre alongside, show weapons or release flares to make their presence unmistakable. On Thursday, as on Monday, the Il-20 eventually departed without incident.

The Il-20: an airliner that became a spy plane

The aircraft at the centre of all this is old. The Il-20, NATO reporting name Coot-A, is a conversion of the Il-18 turboprop airliner that first flew in the late 1950s. The reconnaissance variant first flew in 1968 and went into service in the early 1970s. Only a small number were built, commonly put at around twenty airframes, and the type has been progressively upgraded rather than replaced; the Il-20M designation covers the modernised aircraft that Russia flies today.

Its job is intelligence gathering. The most visible feature is the long canoe-shaped fairing under the fuselage, which houses a side-looking airborne radar. Smaller fairings and antennas carry electronic intelligence and communications intelligence receivers, and cameras. The point of a flight like Thursday’s is to record the emissions of Polish and NATO radars and radio networks, and to log how the alert system responds.

The type has also had a hard war. In September 2018, a Russian Il-20 was shot down off the Syrian coast by a Syrian S-200 missile fired at Israeli aircraft, killing all fifteen on board. Il-20s have been intercepted regularly by NATO Baltic Air Policing fighters for years; what is new in 2026 is the frequency with which they are appearing directly off the Polish coast.

For Poland, the calculus is simple. Each scramble costs fuel, flight hours and crew rest, but the alternative, letting an unidentified aircraft fly dark past its coastline, is not one any NATO air force will accept. Ten intercepts in eight months suggests Moscow is content to keep asking the question. Warsaw, so far, has answered every time.

Sources: Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz on X; Defence24; Rzeczpospolita (radar.rp.pl); MILMAG; Charter97; Militarnyi; Ukrinform; Arab News/AFP; watson.ch