Posted on 03/05/2008 5:30:17 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian bomber aircraft approached a U.S. aircraft carrier off the Korean coast on Wednesday and was intercepted by American fighter jets -- the second such incident in less than a month, U.S. defense officials said.
According to the U.S. officials, a Russian bomber came within three to five nautical miles and flew 2,000 feet (610 meters) above the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its accompanying ships.
Two U.S. F/A-18 fighters were launched to intercept the Russian aircraft and escort it out of the area, according to one defense official.
Russian bombers over the past year have increased their flights near U.S. territory and U.S. naval assets, demonstrating their long-range strike capability.
In February, two Russian bombers approached the Nimitz near Japan and one flew over the carrier, escorted by a U.S. fighter jet. That was the first Russian overflight of a U.S. carrier since 2004.
Those operations come as Russian officials say they will revive some of the military power and reach allowed to collapse with the Soviet Union.
U.S. defense officials on Wednesday said they did not consider the Russian bomber flight a threat or concern.
Used to work with a guy who worked on the TALOS aboard the Chicago around the same time.
If you can defend it, you do.
I meant to say international.
I was part of the Helicopter detachment (not ships company).
The P38 was my Dad’s favorite aircraft of all times for one very practical reason: “When you saw one of those twin boomed beauties, you knew every other airplane in the air was American”.
Rummlin Grummans!
The next thing Putin will do is to send 2 TU-95 Bears flying down the East coast and have them land in Cuba, as they did during the Cold War, then continue their flight to visit their new friend in Venezuela, Loco Chavez.
If you want to have a view of how life was in a Soviet Bear airbase, read “BEAR, Flight to Liberty,” a novel about how the crew of one of those giants planned and effected their escape from the USSR to Canada in August 1976. You can get it from amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com
We found them all the time but couldn’t catch them in our P-3B (the Bear is 100 knots faster and can fly 10,000 feet higher. On the downside, the Bear makes most crew go deaf, so there!).
As long as the Bear has been in use and all the noise (and vibration) I’ve always heard about, a suspicious mind would wonder about metal fatigue in those birds. Not that the Russians would tell anybody if it did begin to crop up.
The book is a work of fiction. No Bear and its crew actually defected to Canada.
The joint maneuvers require coordination and that requires practice. The Russians are rusty and can use the training,
Major Bong lives!
On the day Bong flew his last flight, Dad was training for his fourth invasion, Kyushu.
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