A Russian surveillance plane that flew over the Washington, D.C., area and near Bedminster, N.J., where President Donald Trump is on a working vacation later appeared to fly at low altitude near Wright-Patterson on Wednesday, POLITICO reported.
The website said while the flight was legal under the Open Skies treaty that permits Russia and the United States to conduct surveillance missions over each other’s territory under a 1992 agreement, this trip “appeared to be an attempt to troll President Donald Trump.”
Wright-Patterson spokesman Daryl Mayer confirmed late Wednesday an Open Skies flight did occur.
“We had the standard notification in advance that it was going to happen and it happened exactly the way it was supposed to,” he said.
The Russian Tupolev Tu-154M also flew over West Virginia, Virginia and Pennsylvania “often at low altitudes,” according to a website tracker, POLITICO reported.
The plane appeared to have departed Moscow on Wednesday morning and flew through Iceland before entered the United States off the coast of Virginia, POLITICO reported.
Wright-Patterson is headquarters of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which has a film developing facility set up for Open Skies missions.
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