AN unidentified drone was seen “following” the UK’s £3billion flagship aircraft carrier just days after unmanned devices flew over three RAF bases.
The Royal Navy HMS Queen Elizabeth seemed to be tailed by an unidentified 1.5 by 1.5 metre drone at the entrance to the port of Hamburg, Germany, on Friday.
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The German military tried to target the drone with HP-47 jammers before it flew away, according to the German newspaper Bild.
The 920ft aircraft carrier — the most expensive ship built for the Royal Navy — has been dogged by dodgy plumbing and a leaky propeller since first going to sea in 2017.
It comes after a swarm of unidentified drones were spotted flying over three separate RAF airbases, the US Air Force has said.
The fleet of “unmanned aerial devices” were seen over a £40m RAF airbase that is set to house American nuclear weapons.
The incidents, which occurred between November 20 and 22, saw “small unmanned aerial systems” spotted over RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk.
The US Air Force, which has fighter jets on standby at the bases, said it was unclear at this stage whether the drones were considered hostile.
RAF Lakenheath is a critical military facility that stores the US Air Forces in Europe‘s only fourth and fifth-generation fighter wing, besides being home to F-35A & F-15E tactical jets, military website The War Zone reports.
While US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) played down the incursion, it came amid a week of serious escalation of hostilities between Russia and the West over the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin issued a fresh threat against Western powers just days ago.
The raging dictator warned he could strike British and US military targets in his biggest threat yet after Ukraine fired Nato missiles into Russian territory.
For the first time, Kyiv’s forces hit targets inside Russia using US and British-supplied long-range missiles.
In retaliation, Russia tested a new mid-range hypersonic ballistic missile in a strike on Dnipro, Ukraine.
The attack marked the strongest missile understood to have been used during the conflict so far.
In a televised address on Thursday, Putin said military facilities inside the UK and the US could become valid targets for the Russian forces as a direct response to Ukraine’s use of US-made ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles.
He said: “Russia considers itself entitled to use weapons against military facilities of countries that permit the use of their weapons against Russia.
“Since this moment, as we have underscored repeatedly, the conflict in Ukraine, provoked by the West, has acquired elements of global nature.”
After striking the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with an experimental hypersonic missile early on Thursday, Putin ordered the mass production of the “unstoppable” Oreshnik, believed to be able to reach Britain in under 20 minutes.
Earlier this year, bombshell documents from the Pentagon revealed the US is set to store nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
The tell-it-all documents from the US Department of Defence’s procurement database revealed plans for a “nuclear mission” set to take place “imminently” at the RAF base.
They showed the Pentagon had ordered new equipment for the base, including ballistic shields designed to protect military personnel from “high-value assets” attacks.
RAF Lakenheath is expected to take in B61-12 gravity bombs which have a variable yield of up to 50 kilotons.
The nuclear warheads will be up to three times the strength of the deadly Hiroshima bomb at the air base, according to the procurement contracts.
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