Russian Radar
Posted on 07/15/2010 10:54:29 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The Russian air defense system is designed so that it responds to all aircraft approaching the state's airspace, a high ranking Defense Ministry source has said. "That is perhaps its basic difference from the American system," the source said commenting on recent remarks by a senior U.S. military official.
Adm. James A. Winnefeld, Jr., head of the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), said in an interview Russia continued "to fly strategic nuclear bombers near U.S. and Canadian airspace because the Russian military is seeking to maintain the illusion of power."
He said jet interceptors are not ordered to intercept all the Russian bomber flights: "If we intercept every single flight that comes out in our direction, then we're really just feeding into their propaganda."
"So we intercept them when we feel like we ought to, and we have various criteria that we use for that, to include just rehearsing our own skills to be able to do that."
The Russian source dismissed Winnefeld's "illusion of power" remarks and said Russian strategic bombers continued to fly over the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans for training purposes.
He stressed that bomber crew training was a long-standing, systematic practice in the Russian Air Force.
(Excerpt) Read more at spacewar.com ...
Remember that 19-year-old West German pilot flew a light plane from Helsinki to Moscow(landed in Red Square) was in 1987. That was through their heaviest air defense and he went unchallenged.
It was Strategic Rocket Forces Day. They were partying.
The USAF should of given that kid a medal for exposing a weakness in the the Soviet Union air defense.
How much credibility was their to the claim that the light plane had/has a low radar profile?
The reason why the were quick the Kamchatka Peninsula was the Soviet Union missile testing base. There was a heightened alert around the Kamchatka Peninsula when KAL 007 was in the vicinity, because of a Soviet missile test that was scheduled for the same day. Aircraft from USS Midway and USS Enterprise repeatedly overflew Soviet military installations in the Kurile Islands during FleetEx ‘83,resulting in the dismissal or reprimanding of Soviet military officials who had been unable to shoot them down
William E. Odom, former director of the National Security Agency and author of The Collapse of the Soviet Military, says that Rust’s flight irreparably damaged the reputation of the Soviet military. This enabled Gorbachev to remove many of the strongest opponents to his reforms. The Soviet defense minister Sergei Sokolov and the air defense chief Alexandr Koldunov were fired along with hundreds of other officers. This was the biggest turnover in the Soviet military since Stalin’s purges fifty years earlier
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