Four jets in tight formation were spotted passing over the region on Sunday (February 27) with people in Worcestershire and Warwickshire claiming to have seen them fly overhead.
At 5.25pm, Tom Gibbon tweeted: "Planes Twitter, what's this please? Four in close formation, heading over Warwickshire atm," to which Jack Wright replied: "We just saw over Worcestershire 5 mins ago. No idea sorry. Strange."
With tensions running high in Ukraine, some may have speculated the Typhoon jets were heading for eastern Europe after Putin announced its nuclear missiles were on standby. But GloucestershireLive appears to have cracked the airborn mystery.
It's understood the four RAF Typhoon jets were returning from a joint military training operation, called Exercise Red Flag. This exercise aims to familiarise British, American and Australian pilots with what it is like to experience ground-to-air attacks while in flight.
After making their way across the Atlantic from the US Air Force training base in Nevada, the four RAF Eurofighter Typhoons stayed in close formation while flying over the South West until returning to their home base RAF Colingsby in Lincolnshire.
Exercise Red Flag has been run as an annual joint training exercise between British and American air forces since 1977. The US started the exercise after losing over 1,700 planes in Vietnam - discovering that many of these losses were incurred within the pilot's first ten sorties.
As Forces.net reports, pilots are put through simulations of various real-world combat situations, such as facing ground fire, an enemy aerial assault, as well as potential cyber attack. These confrontations are war-gamed as though facing potential geopolitical threats from Russia, China and North Korea.
Did you see the aircraft? Tell us in the comments section.
It is hoped that this training will boost co-operation between allies in facing the ever-growing threats faced by many Western countries in an ever-changing world. Typically, around 300 UK pilots take parts in the exercise every year. Though these RAF pilots were only out on a training mission, British forces have this week flown east to bolster their European NATO allies.
There are currently four RAF Typhoon fighter jets based in the Cyprus RAF base Akrotiri as part of wider UK air policing missions across the area. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said of the deployment: "Our armed forces are once again being called upon in the service of our Nation and I salute the bravery and sense of duty shared by all our personnel who have been deployed to support NATO.
“Alongside our NATO Allies, these deployments constitute a credible deterrent to stop Russian aggression threatening the territorial sovereignty of member states.”
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