French surveillance flights keep close watch on Russia and Ukraine, drawing boundary in European skies

A huge fire tore through an online retailer's warehouse in St. Petersburg Saturday with video showing intense flames and thick black smoke rising into the sky (CREDIT: Reuters). Seen from up here, in the cockpit of a French air force surveillance plane flying over neighboring Romania, the snow-dusted landscapes look deceptively peaceful. The dead from Russia's war, the shattered Ukrainian towns and mangled battlefields, aren't visible to the naked eye through the clouds. But French military technicians riding farther back in the aircraft, monitoring screens that display the word "secret" when idle, have a far more penetrating view. With a powerful radar that rotates six times every minute on the fuselage and a bellyful of surveillance gear, the plane can spot missile launches, airborne bombing runs and other military activity in the conflict.