On 26 July 2010 the Romanian authorities reported on a helicopter crash near Braslov in central Romania. The helicopter was taking part in a BLUE SKY 2010 military drill. The accident claimed the lives of at least six Israelis and one Romanian.

International media coverage made only a brief mention of the joint Romanian-Israeli exercises, which are regularly held on an annual basis.

In fact, what we are looking at is a training programme being run under NATO auspices since 2004. While the Israelis help the Romanians, and others, to acquire search and rescue techniques behind enemy lines, the Romanians teach the Israelis to become mountain helicopter pilots.

As NATO members, Romanians have been deployed both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Israeli forces, who don’t need to practice helicopter altitude flying to defend their country since it has no high mountains, are actually being trained by the Alliance to aggress their neighbours.

According to our sources, other armies are involved in Blue Sky 2010, in particular officers from the Republic of Moldava and the United States.