Original subtitles

The room goes a bit more quiet and everyone goes a bit more serious

because you are going up to go and get a Russian.

SIREN WAILS

Go! Go! Go!

The heart's going a bit, the adrenaline is definitely pumping.

As a junior pilot I've never seen a Russian aircraft up close,

and you don't want to be making mistakes.

There's a lot of pressure in the build up.

You're definitely on edge the entire time

because it's a life or death scenario.

The RAF is on high alert.

The world at the moment is not in the best of places.

The Russian vessel running along at ten knots.

Everything that's happening with Russia and Ukraine,

it's like a tinderbox.

You're doing an important role protecting from Vlady the Baddy.

ALARM WAILS

Ha-ha!

With conflict in Europe

and the Middle East...

...British warplanes are poised to face any threat.

We are one trigger press away from starting World war Ill.

Only when you've sat in your own pee for about two hours over Mosul

have you really made it. It's what you don't see on Top Gun.

# I know my name as it's called again

# Ooh-ooh. #

INDISTINCT SINGING

ALARM WAILS

At a one-time Soviet airbase,

the NATO jets are busier than ever.

They pride themselves on rapid reaction here.

Air crews are able to scramble and be airborne in just a few minutes.

What was the time? Very, very quick. Another one for the scoreboard.

Alongside NATO colleagues from Germany,

RAF Lossiemouth's 9 Squadron

has been deployed to Estonia's Amari airbase.

Just 200 miles from Russia.

I'm just going to update the Germans.

Always the avionics. It's always the avionics.

Takes a few minutes. You just need to get better avionics guys.

You hid the pen so we can't update it?

No! LAUGHTER

Never fear, Sharpie is here.

Number acht.

THEY LAUGH

There's a good race on at the moment and we've been told to go up

and get airborne to when the jets are ready to go.

So we're winning, naturally,

and the Germans are trying their best to catch up.

I'm Flight Lieutenant Moz

and I'm a Typhoon pilot based at RAF Lossiemouth, on 9 Bomber Squadron.

Always wanted to do it, really, since I was young.

Dad was in the Air Force as well, so was Grandad on my mum's side,

and all the stories of the comradery and the extracurriculars

always sounded quite good fun.

Is this your locker, Moz? Yeah, this is my locker here, yeah, yeah.

Do you mind if I tidy it up a bit first before you put it on camera?

How many pilots are in here?

There's quite a few. We share with Germans at the moment

so there's about five or six of us and a couple of other guys as well.

I learned to fly the Typhoon ten months ago.

I'd definitely still call myself a JP, Junior Pilot.

Definitely don't have as much experience as the other guys

on the squadron but it's a great squadron to be learning on.

How you getting on? Just doing some maintenance. Cool.

Since 9 Squadron moved into Amari,

scrambles to intercept Russian jets,

flying worryingly close to NATO territory,

have occurred almost daily.

I'm Wing Commander Richard Leask, Officer Commanding, 9 Squadron.

Our core mission here is the defence of NATO air space.

How do we do that? That's in quick reaction alert.

We practice our scrambles. We call them tango scrambles.

For the junior pilots, in particular, who are new to QRA,

it's a fantastic training opportunity

to get used to and comfortable with scrambling aircraft.

The Amari QRA is quite exciting,

trying to cut down that time to get airborne,

it's definitely part of being a pilot that you want to be the best.

PHONE RINGS

SIREN WAILS

When the QRA alarm sounds,

pilots are expected to be airborne within minutes

to intercept any potential threat.

The alarm goes, everything else goes out the window.

Nothing else is important at that point.

It's an instant adrenaline rush.

Then get airborne as quickly as possible.

Before he can get under way,

an alarm's triggered inside Moz's cockpit.

Told him to get an FRS, shut down, come back in.

Moz can't fly until it's deactivated.

The Germans win this race and go it alone.

What actually happened?

I pulled a PLB out by accident, so, yeah, got to reset.

The personal locator beacon is attached to a pilot's flying suit

and is usually only activated in an emergency.

If you were to eject, your beacon would get pulled

and it'll emit a frequency to locate you if you were in a dingy.

Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, it's just been snagged.

It's happened to a lot of people, I've certainly done it before,

when I was on a deployment out in Malaysia,

I went to the spare aircraft and in the heat of the moment

ran into the spare, just caught it on the way out. All right, Moz?

Mate, these things happen, don't worry about it.

I've done it before, you won't be the last.

It's the first time I've ever done it in a Typhoon

and it had to fucking be on fucking TV.

Don't worry about it, these things happen.

It can be frustrating, he'll beat himself up about it but,

big picture, nothing was lost, it was a training sortie,

it was quickly rectified, so, yeah...

He just puts it behind him and go on and get on with the job.

You've lost two points there, you realise that? I know, I know.

THEY LAUGH

When you make a mistake in the jet, it's frustrating.

Sometimes it's out of your control and there's external factors but,

yeah, there's a mistake you've made and in the moment you know it,

massively frustrating, especially if there's a lot riding on it.

We've got multiple different standards of accommodation.

We are in the process of upgrading

but like anything it takes time, it takes money.

150 miles north of Edinburgh, RAF Lossiemouth is expanding.

So you're here to look at the new accommodation, are you? Yeah.

So, you're hoping to get in here quickly and have your own shower.

Around 1,000 people live inside the wire

of the RAF's busiest operational airbase at any one time.

Living on base is not always the best but

having a short commute to work, especially in something

that does 25 miles to the gallon, is a bit of a godsend, really.

27-year-old Ross Macleod

was posted to Lossiemouth after completing his basic training.

I grew up in York.

I was a little bit restless, I think.

The main reason I joined was to be a part of something

a lot bigger than myself,

I wanted to get out and do something a bit different, a bit special.

Ross is among the first-ever group of recruits the RAF are training

to operate their brand-new surveillance aircraft, Poseidon.

OK. Morning, folks!

SUW and SW against merch targets today.

We do need to get into Reykjavik's airspace then we'll talk to them later on.

I'm training to search for

and track Russian boats using various different means,

lots of which is kind of shrouded in a little bit of secrecy.

With Russian naval activity at its highest since the Cold War...

En route then we won't go too high, about 180 up to 220,

depending on the airspace usage above us.

...the RAF needs more crews

trained in detecting vessels in waters around the UK.

There is a perceived threat from Russia.

They are probably the main player that we go out and look for.

They send a lot of stuff our way.

We find it, you know, they are sneaky.

Don't just sit back and relax and don't think that just

because someone else is looking over your shoulder

you can sit on any information. Do speak out and speak clearly.

After three and a half years of training,

Ross is facing his final and most important test flight.

Pass, and he progresses to front line duties.

Fail, and he must re-sit the last eight months.

This is the one you need to do to pass.

So just don't do anything silly.

Keep with the SOPs and do exactly as you've been doing

in the last few sorties and everything will be magic.

Final flight, pretty nervous,

there's a lot riding on it.

It's basically the answer to, "Do we pass the course or not?"

You've operated to an LCR standard so far. Any other questions?

Overseeing Ross's final flight is Squadron Leader Stuart Roxbourgh,

a Cold war veteran turned instructor.

The Russians are developing bigger, better, quieter,

more capable boats than they were during the Cold War.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

And, consequently, we in the Royal Air Force,

we need to train a generation of aircrew who are as capable,

if not better, at hunting them down,

at finding them, at being able to ascertain where they are,

what they're doing, where they're going.

OK, delta brief, then, checklist.

Aircraft steps, the parking brake is set

and we are clear to close the door at your discretion.

Any questions? Let's go.

Our job is to help secure the seas

around the United Kingdom and wherever else we're tasked.

We have to ensure that the individuals are good enough

to go to the front line to go out on patrol and find and locate,

track and report those contacts.

On the qualifying flight,

you need to be able to go to the front line the next day.

So, the gloves are off.

what else have you got to do, mate? Oh, fucking hell. way-hey.

A lot of pressure, a lot of things on the mind,

the one thing I forgot to do on the ready for take-off

was bring the steps in,

so the door got shut but the steps were still out

which was probably not the best start to the final test.

Heading north over the Atlantic,

Ross' mission is to find three commercial fishing vessels

operating within one of Europe's most inhospitable shipping lanes.

Locate them, and he'll qualify for active operations,

hunting real military targets.

Using the Poseidon's long-range camera,

Ross must visually identify the target ships,

but poor conditions are making it tougher.

Getting visual with these targets is going to be really difficult today,

even if we're looking out the windows right on top of them.

I've wanted to do this for as long as I can remember,

to be a part of the defence of our nation.

I would hate to have got to this point and not pass the final test.

Pretty nerve-racking. It could all go wrong.

Where we work, we're not... We're not in the Bahamas.

We're not in, you know, the beautiful Mediterranean

where there's good weather all the time. It's awful weather outside.

Really not what we want on our final test.

In the RAF's brand-new surveillance aircraft,

Poseidon trainee Ross

is struggling to find the first of three fishing vessels.

To avoid cloud cover, they're descending to 250 feet.

You wouldn't think you'd ever find yourself sitting on an airliner

effectively going 250 feet over the ocean,

you know, going past fishing vessels and you can see they guys on board,

as you go past, without a camera.

That's pretty...pretty impressive.

Two hours into the flight...

Oh.

...Ross spots something on the camera.

Ross has successfully located

and identified the first of three fishing vessels.

Finally seeing it when you're under that pressure

is a massive wave of relief.

With two more targets to find, the test is far from over.

I think anyone that's not feeling nervous has probably

got their head switched on wrong.

This is it, this is make or break.

The pressure's on when there's a task at hand,

but we can fly for eight, nine hours at a time

so food's always... always a priority as well.

Yeah, I'm pretty food focused. I love a good feed.

One of the hidden perks, I suppose, of the job on P8

is we've got the galley.

It's the busiest I've seen it at Amari since being here,

that's for sure. I think even the Estonians sent a jet up,

I don't know, t hey just do their own thing.

What's it like sitting on top of that?

Well, it's not that comfy to sit on.

I mean, I can sleep anywhere. I have slept on the wings, etc.

But it's all right, just like sitting on a car, isn't it?

Like sitting on a Lamborghini, is that special?

Right, gentle, gentle, monkey, monkey. Let's not sheer it.

There we go, leave that there, not sheared, not broken.

Engineers have got a better gig.

We get to fix them, we don't have to fly them.

Only pilots go to war in the RAF.

Hanger piloting is even cooler cos then we get it on sticks

put the under carriage up, fly about, pretend I'm being Maverick...

That's pretty cool.

We had an alpha scramble about an hour and a half ago.

Jet's just come back.

We're just giving it a check over, refuelling it now,

checking all weapons and making sure they're good as well.

And then once it's refuel led, we'll park it back on,

the pilot will come out and take charge of the jet again

and then on state for a next alpha scramble.

Junior pilot Moz is starting his very first shift

on QRA duty in Estonia.

Cheers, mate, cheers.

Never before has he guarded NATO's front line against the Russians.

Being on QRA is definitely exciting, it feels a bit more serious,

there's a lot of pressure, I'd say, in the build up,

you're definitely on edge for the entire time.

While on QRA, 9 Squadron receive minute-by-minute intelligence

on possible threats to NATO airspace.

It's about 15, 20 minutes away...

A Russian aircraft has been spotted leaving St Petersburg.

It's just begun heading towards Estonia.

Whilst you're on Q there is always

a heightened level of alert state you're in.

You never fully switch off.

The room kind of goes a bit more quiet

and everyone goes a bit more serious.

We call it the mission bubble in fighter pilot world.

It's where you start to protect yourself from the external factors

and focus on what's actually about to happen.

It's the unknown and the adrenaline buzz

of getting airborne extremely quickly into a situation

where you're going to have to intercept something

and bring all your training, that you've spent years practising,

into life.

There's a potential Russian aircraft in the area at the moment,

we're currently tracking that

and we're looking to see if that means NATO want us

to go and intercept that aircraft.

What's happening in there? In there, right now?

Well, they were thinking there might be another alpha scramble

that was getting quite close, so if the alarm goes off

and I go sprinting off, not my fault.

SIREN WAILS

Go, go, go.

The decision has been made

to scramble and intercept the Russian jet.

Once the information is coming in from NATO the heart's going a bit,

the adrenaline's definitely pumping.

At the end of the day it's cos it's a Russian aircraft out there,

and it's not just a guy you're having a chat with

in the coffee bar next door, you're going up to go and get a Russian.

The Russians are getting too close to NATO airspace.

Moz needs to quickly ID the aircraft and establish its intentions.

You never know for sure what it is that you're intercepting

or what exactly is there until you actually see it with your own eyes.

UNTRANSLATED

Small mistakes could amount to quite a big error in the air

and lead to a potentially dangerous situation.

It's a life or death scenario every time you go flying, it's always, always dangerous.

It's good being back at home after what's been a long four months.

Typhoon pilot Ben Chergui is returning home

from his first active deployment,

flying missions against the remnants of the terror group

Islamic State.

It's a huge contrast in landscape as well,

driving past the river Spey here compared to

the Euphrates in Iraq and Syria,

so this is a nice welcome change, a lot more green.

Being a fighter pilot, it's probably one of the best jobs in the world.

But when things have gone wrong,

that always plays on your mind a lot.

It's a bit strange coming back.

Do you reflect on your experience out there?

It's hard not to, really.

A lot of people in a lot of jobs say it's high pressure environment

and you need to make the right decision but I think, in this job

as a fighter pilot on ops, if you make the wrong decision someone dies

and that can happen in a split second

and sometimes you have just a few seconds to make a decision

and if you don't make the correct one, when you come back from ops

you're still thinking about it, thinking what you could've done differently.

Sat in the cockpit,

ultimately you're responsible for everything that you do.

And dropping a bomb. I can't think of anything more serious.

To take a life you have to be 100% sure.

After returning from overseas deployments,

all personnel are invited to speak with one of the padres at the base.

Hi. How are you doing? Ah, padre. Thanks so much for seeing me.

Good to meet you. I'm just about to make a brew, do you want anything?

Yeah, please, if possible, I'll grab a coffee, if that's all right? Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

All padres are religious leaders sent to be in the RAF.

We provide a safe space for people to come and sound to off,

and believe you me there's not much my four walls haven't heard.

OK, come on, we'll up to my office, we're up the stairs.

Take your jacket off if you want, make yourself at home.

So how's it going? Yeah, good. I'm happy to be back at Lossiemouth.

So how many op tours have you done?

This is my first one. This is my first, Op Shader,

so I am fresh out of the packet. So tell me about the last four months.

Is there anything about the tour that sticks in your mind for you

that you found particularly challenging, or...?

We had a call of coalition forces camp that had recently been mortared

and they tracked back the mortar position to this rough grid square.

We found an individual moving what looked to be a load of piping maybe,

or potential mortars. We couldn't quite see what was going on

but they were confident it had come from that location

and he was the only person there. This does look a bit suspicious.

How did you feel in that moment? I mean, what was going through your mind?

You haven't really got time to think about, you know,

"How do I feel about killing this person?”

That ship's sailed, that ship sailed when you join the Air Force.

Are they the right person to kill?

That's all you're thinking about. Sure, sure.

Part of you wants to do your job, you know... Sure, sure.

...and you want to take somebody bad off the battlefield

but at the same time you don't want to make any mistakes

or kill the wrong person or kill someone who didn't need to die.

You don't want that hanging over your head for the rest of your life.

It just highlights the life and death decisions, effectively,

that are in your hands. I've descended as low as I physically can

and literally as I pass through the overhead,

I can make out what appear to be cattle following this individual.

It turned out it was just a farmer

and he was just doing his job as a farmer.

I mean, have you reflected on that experience

and how do you feel about it?

That was one of those moments where I thought, you know,

we could have easily ended up attempting to weaponeer on him.

I'm quite glad that we took the time to be more methodical and,

as a result of that, we ID'd him as friendly

and neutral and we left him to go about his business.

It's the closest I came to dropping weapons on operations

and we came really close.

My door's always open so any time you want to come for a brew

and a bit of a chat then you're more than welcome.

See you. Thanks very much, padre. No problem.

Above the Baltic Sea,

junior pilot Moz is on his first QRA mission.

He's been tasked to intercept

an unidentified Russian aircraft

that's heading towards NATO airspace.

We have information that there is

a Russian aircraft that's in the vicinity.

There is a possibility that

the Russian aircraft isn't what it claims to be.

Intelligence has been unable to confirm

what type of aircraft it is,

and whether or not it poses a threat to NATO security.

We've got to get there quickly, make sure that we've got good

intelligence on it and we know what it is.

What we have seen before is there might be other aircraft

with it that haven't been declared

and that air traffic aren't aware of.

Intelligence from NATO is guiding Moz towards the Russian aircraft.

There could be extra Russian fighters acting as escorts

that are attached to the aircraft

and the only way we'll know is by getting close enough

for our radar to pick them up and to then visually identify them as well.

Moz must now quickly establish what the aircraft is,

and why it's flying so close to NATO airspace.

You can't be thinking about other things or being distracted,

you know, everything else goes out the window.

Nothing else is important at that point.

The only thing that matters is doing the job properly and safely.

Definitely felt quite excited,

first time I'd seen a Russian aircraft up close,

or any enemy aircraft like that.

So you definitely want to be on your game, knowing that

they're filming you just the same as you're filming them.

You don't want to be taken advantage of in any Russian propaganda

or make any mistakes that are going to embarrass you or NATO.

We don't know why the flight plan said it was one type of aircraft

when we identified it as a different type of aircraft.

I don't think there's any way of us finding out or knowing

but that's just part of the job is the visual identification of the aircraft.

It is a Russian air-to-air refueller,

from its flight path and everything it was doing, it was perfectly safe.

It's likely on a transit flight going back

to where it was originally based.

All of this information will get fed back to NATO.

Seeing a Russian aircraft up close,

there was definitely an excited feeling in the cockpit,

big feeling of pride that I finally got to do the job.

Yeah, it was cool.

Finally kind of at the leading edge

after all the years of training and hard work.

Definitely feels like it's paying off.

In the North Atlantic, Poseidon trainee Ross

must locate two more target vessels

to stand any chance of becoming front line capable.

Fail, and he'll have to repeat the entire eight-month course.

Ross has now successfully located two out of the three targets...

...but he still has one left to find,

whilst flying just 500 feet above sea level in poor weather.

There are standards for a reason.

Yeah, it's pretty nerve-racking, it's pretty tense,

there's a lot riding on it.

Doing this job for real we'd go out looking for Russian vessels.

It's a really important job. It could be the difference

of winning or losing a conflict, if it ever came down to it.

The Poseidon jet has climbed to try to give the trainees

a better chance of finding the last target,

but time is in short supply.

Trying to find gaps in clouds can be really quite testing

and there is definitely pressure to perform,

especially with an instructor breathing down your neck.

The weather conditions have deteriorated further.

The instructors are left no choice but to abort the test early.

We didn't find everything,

so it does really beg the question, have we done enough to pass?

It's been a long, long slog from when I started basic training

up until this point.

Right, guys, we had some challenges with the weather to deal with,

still managed to find two of those targets

and, yeah, it went really quite well.

We'll be recommending to OC 201

that you're given the LCR Op Cap. So, well done, congratulations.

Ross and his fellow students can now

officially fly on front line missions

in any of Lossiemouth's nine Poseidon jets.

Well done. Well done, Charlie. Thank you. Excellent.

One of the proudest days of my life.

I'm serving my country.

I'm sure I'IL learn to love the colour eventually.

All that remains is for Ross to be awarded his wings

for 120 Squadron.

Our badges have arrived guys. Oh, the valuable cargo.

Welcome, everybody, that's the first thing, and I am aware that

I'm here between you guys and girls

and the bar so I'll keep this nice and short.

So everyone in this room has contributed to this

in one way, shape or form.

Sergeant Ross Macleod.

Cheers, sir. Thank you very much. Cheers.

It's really nice to look around at the people that you've just done it

with and think, actually, you know, we kind of... We did this all together.

It's the start of us being able to get on the front line

and do the job that we all joined to do.

Fucking hell, it is nippy out here. Jesus!

So we've just had an alpha scramble,

they've launched and obviously now they're currently in the air

so I'm getting ready for when it comes back down to pin it up.

After successfully completing his first Russian intercept,

junior pilot Moz is returning to base.

When we do have a tango, obviously we know it's coming, normally,

so you're ready for it,

but when it's an alpha, like this afternoon's alpha,

we had no intention of going up.

Everyone's just keen to get involved on them

so when it does happen, everyone wants to be around

and that's when you have every man and his dog coming down to watch.

It's definitely an intense experience.

First time that I'd seen a Russian aircraft up close.

Or any enemy aircraft like that.

It was just very satisfying to me to have done the job properly.

How does your first live scramble compare

to your training scrambles you've done so far? Yeah, it was awesome.

It's different, isn't it? The heart's going a bit

the adrenaline's definitely pumping so, yeah, good trip.

Well, good job, nice one, first intercept. Brilliant. Thank you.

Nice one.

I'm so glad Moz got his scramble as well.

Because that's his first ever alpha scramble

which is a huge, huge moment for him.

It definitely feels like a pretty significant moment,

yeah, first actual alpha scramble, yeah, it was cool.

Definitely a big feeling of pride.

Probably tell my parents at some point and, yeah, I'm sure

they'll tell the rest of the family

and I'll drop it into conversation with my friends when I get home.

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