Amid the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, the United Kingdom has been supporting Volodymyr Zelensky and his troops with arms and ammunition. While UK’s military aid to Ukraine has reached $2.8 billion so far, a rather secret military route appears to have opened up to allegedly supply arms, and it involves Pakistan.
Curiously enough, the reports in this regard came out even as Pakistan Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa visited UK, as part of a global trip that also includes stops at Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. He is also expected to visit the US.
A Twitter handle by the name of ‘The Intel Consortium’ recently published a tweet thread using open source intelligence, where it was revealed that Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) was supplying some kind of military equipment to the war-torn country via a running air bridge. The original tweet appears to have disappeared, but screenshots and tweet thread are still available online.
The running air bridge has three points which RAF’s C-17A Globemaster III (call sign: ZZ173) has been using to make daily trips. According to the thread, the Globemaster is using the Nur Khan Air Base in Rawalpindi, Pakistan to Avram Iancu Cluj International Airport in Romania via RAF base Akrotiri in Cyprus.
According to data sourced from commercially available flight tracking software, the aircraft made daily trips on this route from August 6 to August 15, till the report was published.
It is pertinent to note that while entering Pakistan, the Globemaster avoided Iran and Afghanistan airspace and used the air route through Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Moreover, the military aircraft spent an average of one hour and 30 minutes at the Romanian Airport, about three-four hours in Cyprus and almost 12-20 hours at the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi.
However, no official word has been released by the authorities of the three countries regarding this rather secretive air route. It is also not clear what kind of equipment the cargo plane was carrying.
The Twitter account, however, had its own theory regarding the military piece of equipment being ferried.
“Ukrainian war planners have said the best aid they can get is 155mm artillery ammunition. The US recently sent 75,000 rounds of it to Ukraine. Guess who else makes that ammunition: Pakistan Ordinance Factory,” ‘the Intel Consortium said in a tweet.
“Pakistan also has over 320 Ukrainian T-80UD tanks in service, and a completely developed ecosystem of their maintenance, operation, ammunition, and spare parts,” the account further claimed.
The account noted that the Globemaster can carry C-17A can carry 77,500 kilogrammes of cargo in one trip and so far, with six round trips, it had carried almost 465,000 kilogrammes of ‘something’ to Romania and beyond.
Officially, the UK has sent three M270 multiple-launch rocket systems with M31A1 precision munitions, 5,000 light anti-tank weapons, hundreds of Brimstone missiles, 120 armoured vehicles, heavy lift T-150 unmanned aerial vehicle (drones), six air defence systems, including Starstreak missiles and six Stormer vehicles to Ukraine.