Quick Reaction Alert
Pilots and engineers on QRA duty are at immediate readiness twenty-four hours a day.
Two Typhoon aircraft are maintained at readiness, along with a Voyager tanker at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.
Military aircraft from Russia can be tracked across Norway, and reported to the Norwegian Joint Headquarters near Bodø, or the Combined Air Operations Centre 2 (CAOC UE) in Uedem, North Rhine-Westphalia close to the border with the Netherlands.
The Tu-95 aircraft are on 12-14 hour missions, and when tracked across Norway have been colloquially referred to with the codename of zombies.
[citation needed] A QRA response involves the fighter aircraft being scrambled to investigate an infringement of the NATO country's airspace or area of interest.
This may also be a civilian aircraft that poses a threat, if not sufficiently responding to air traffic control (ATC).
Incidents of this nature in the UK are monitored by the Control and Reporting Centre (CRC) at RAF Boulmer, which builds a 3D Recognised Air Picture.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, though members of NATO, have no fighters capable of QRA intercepts.
The Finnish Air Force Fighter Squadron 31 (Hävittäjälentolaivue 31, HävLLv 31) uses F-18C/D from Rovaniemi and Kuopio.
[13] Italian Air Force squadrons equipped with Typhoon and F-35 jets provide QRA coverage on a rotational basis.
They intercept once notified by the Air Operations Control Station Nieuw-Milligen, near Apeldoorn in Gelderland.
The RNLAF alternates the responsibilities for QRA above Benelux with the Belgian Air Component every four months since 2016/2017.
[15][16][17] The RoAF 71st Air Base (Baza 71 Aeriană) at Câmpia Turzii in central Romania and the RoAF 86th Air Base (Baza 86 Aeriană) at Borcea in south-east Romania are on QRA duty.
On the one hand, there are four units dependent on the Air Combat Command (MACOM) that are responsible for protecting the airspace.
The QRAs are attended to by different predisposed units, which follow an action plan, in which several Air Force aircraft are prepared to respond to the alert within a maximum time of 15 minutes.
A single base is not established as an operations center that is responsible for these activities, but there are several in Spanish territory that are "on duty" to respond to any requirement.
Quick Reaction Alert is the current iteration of scrambling, developed by RAF Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain.
The first country to put the Typhoon onto QRA duty was Italy in December 2005, by IX Gruppo of 4º Stormo.
[23] Before computers arrived in the 1970s, the Russian aircraft were plotted on a map, mainly by WRAF personnel.
Every QRA alert required a Victor tanker from RAF Marham in Norfolk, with the codename Dragonfly.
The RAF Phantom variant had Spey engines, which were not intentionally designed for the aircraft, and gave lower performance.
Typhoons arrived at RAF Leuchars with 6 Sqn from September 2010, performing their first QRA scramble in January 2011.
