"CHANGE" - Russian nuclear-capable bombers 'tested' US air defenses 16 times in last 10 days.(
RT).
“Over the past week, NORAD has visually identified Russian aircraft
operating in and around the US air defense identification zones,” said Maj.
Beth Smith, spokeswoman for US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace
Defense Command (NORAD).
Smith sought to downplay the incursions that she called “a spike in
activity,” telling the Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz that the flights
were assessed as routine training missions and exercises.
But an unnamed defense official familiar with the incursion reports disagreed
with Smith’s assessment.
“These are not just training missions,” the
official told Gertz,
saying that Russian strategic nuclear forces appear to be “trying to test
our air defense reactions, or our command and control systems.”
NORAD scrambled fighter jets several times when Russian strategic aircraft
flew along US ADIZs. The planes included a mix of Tu-95 Bear H heavy bombers and
Tu-142 Bear F maritime reconnaissance aircraft, as well as one IL-20
intelligence collection aircraft, Smith said.
The bomber flights took place mainly along the Alaskan air defense
identification zone that covers the Aleutian Islands and the continental part of
the state, and one incursion involved entry into Canada’s air defense zone, she
added.
“Such aerial bravado has been rare since the fall of the Soviet
Union,” News.com.au wrote. “Until now.”
“And it all appears to be a direct result of the cooling of relations
between the West and Russia over the invasion of Crimea and the shooting-down of
MH17,” the Australian News Corp site added.
During the Cold War, Soviet bombers sought to trigger US air defenses as
preparation for a potential nuclear conflict.
The recent spike in activity after a surface-to-air missile brought down the
Malaysia Airlines plane is not the first time Russian military planes were
detected in US ADIZs this summer.
On June 9, a pair of Tu-95 Bear H aircraft
maintained by Russia came
close to US
airspace during practice bombing while four of the planes were conducting
bombing runs near Alaska, a NORAD spokesman told Gertz.
“After tracking the bombers as they flew eastward, two of the four Bears
turned around and headed west toward the Russian Far East,” he wrote of the
June incident. “The remaining two nuclear-capable bombers then flew
southeast and around 9:30 P.M. entered the US northern air defense zone off the
coast of Northern California.”
Those two aircraft, Gertz added, made it within 50 miles of the coast before
turning around after a US F-15 intercepted them.
Russian aircraft have also made incursions into other countries’ airspace
this year. In June, the UK’s Royal Air Force scrambled Typhoon fighter jets to
intercept four flights of aircraft in the airspace around the Baltic states. The
planes included advanced Tu-22M Backfire bombers, Su-27 Flanker interceptors, an
A-50 Mainstay radar aircraft and a transport aircraft, News.com.au wrote.
Russian-owned Tu-95 bombers skirted UK airspace and have come close to US
property in both Guam and California,
The
Aviationist reported in May.
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