Posted on 01/29/2016 12:40:59 PM PST by BenLurkin
A Russian fighter jet came within 15 feet of a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane over the Black Sea this week in what the Pentagon is calling an "unsafe" incident, U.S. officials say.
"On January 25, 2016, a U.S. RC-135U flying a routine route in international airspace over the Black Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner. We are looking into this particular incident," said a statement from Army Lt. Col. Michelle L. Baldanza, a Defense Department spokesperson.
Another U.S. military official told CNN that the Russian jet flew along the right side the U.S. plane then turned away in a maneuver that had an adverse impact on the "controllability of the U.S. aircraft." The official did not know if the Russian aircraft was armed at the time. The official said the incident occurred more than 40 miles from the Russian coast.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
0bama is currently drafting an apology letter to Putin and will see into a court martial of the crew.
0bama is currently drafting an apology letter to Putin and will see into a court martial of the crew.
I’d hate to be on the crew of one of these missions, and know that the CiC won’t do anything more than have an underling deliver a statement to the media if you end up dead as a result of this kind of thing.
Turkey would have splashed them.
unsafe and unprofessional...wow, that will really get the Russians attention...they’ll draft a response right after the entire chain of command and the pilot quit doing vodka shots out of Moldovan strippers navels.
If you don’t stop this, we’ll write you a letter telling you how angry we are!
Unfortunately, Maverick and Goose were not driving a Tomcat this time...
But then, this was CNN, not known for honesty.
The latter article was written .008 seconds after the first and that explains the difference.
Didn’t know if the aircraft was armed or not ..????
Really ..???
Have you people ever seen these SU aircraft - if they were armed, wouldn’t you have easily seen the weaponry ..???
/snark.........
I used to be stationed at Offutt (a long time ago) and probably worked on that very airplane. However, we had several RC-135s and they were a little different from one another and I didn’t the tail number mentioned in the article.
But actually, I thought interception by fighters was normal, SOP. Maybe 15 feet is closer than normal.
Russian planes armed? Of course.
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