Posted on 04/11/2015 5:04:01 AM PDT by Paid_Russian_Troll
A Russia Su-27 jet fighter flew dangerously close and nearly collided with a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft this week in the latest aerial provocation by Moscow, defense officials revealed to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Su-27 conducted the close-in intercept of an RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the Baltic Sea on Tuesday, said officials. The incident prompted a diplomatic protest.
“On the morning of April 7th, a U.S. RC-135U flying a routine route in international airspace was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 Flanker in an unsafe and unprofessional manner,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen M. Lainez.
“The United States is raising this incident with Russia in the appropriate diplomatic and official channels,” she said in a statement.
A defense official said the Russian fighter jet flew within 20 feet of the unarmed reconnaissance jet in what the official called a “reckless” encounter that endangered the lives of the RC-135 crew.
No details were available regarding the mission of the RC-135, which was in a position to monitor Russian military activities in western Russia and Kaliningrad.
The RC-135 is a militarized and upgraded Boeing 707 jetliner that can be configured for several types of intelligence gathering, including photo, nuclear monitoring, and electronic spying.
The RC-135U variant involved in Tuesday’s near collision is code-named Combat Sent and conducts technical intelligence gathering on enemy electronic signals and radar emitters.
The monitoring comes amid new worries that Russia is deploying new short-range Iskander nuclear capable missiles in Kaliningrad and Russian-occupied Crimea in the Ukraine.
A second defense official said there have been no recent Russian aerial provocations near U.S. coasts. But Moscow is expected to ramp up its training operations flights around this time of year.
“That means we’re probably due for [aerial encounters] soon,” the official said.
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
I’ll say this about your screen name: at least you’re honest.
CC
“a U.S. RC-135U flying a routine route in international airspace was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 Flanker in an unsafe and unprofessional manner”
Man, that surely brings back some old memories...
Testing the waters?
Just as on the playground a little pushing & shoving to see if there is a response?
Something tells me that the pilots would have landed in Russian territory and handed the RC-135U over to the Russians just like they did in 2001 with the P3 had the Russian pilot ‘connected’.
/s
(propaganda-ping)
Has Obama apologized yet?
One could say that about many nations. Freedom and liberty are the exception in history.
No nation in history has embraced thugsterism quite like the Roos...
This was a big deal, as not only was it the first Tomcat lost with a Phoenix on it, the Soviets saw it and knew exactly where it was.
The Tomcat went over the side near the waist cat (faulty fuel control, as I recall) on the port side, and the Soviet cruiser was about the 2 o'clock position off our starboard bow probably a few miles away, and when the plane went over the side, they poured on the steam to cut across our bow to get a better look a the action they couldn't see, and one of our destroyers cut right across their bow blocking their path.
Such were the state of affairs in the Cold War...we used to have Soviet trawlers trailing us, and when you looked through the binoculars at them, there seemed like 10 sailors on there with binoculars just looking back at you.
One time, when my plane was tied down near the fantail, me and one of my buddies pulled down our pants to moon them. We thought for sure there would have been some response, laughing or such, but...they just stood unmoving, watching through their binoculars.
Dark Moon Rising.
We need to send up F-35s pronto to deal with this. Sure, they don’t have guns, but they can maybe ram the russkies, just as the russkies used to ram luftwaffe with their Polikarpov’s.
I used to fly on this bird. No shock here. At least he didn’t hit it like that Chinese test pilot.
20 feet sounds like a stretch but something is gonna happen here someday if things don't get back to the way they were before this Ukrainian coup.
I was on the FDR (WW2 era flat top )-1976
we mooned a cruiser doing high speed passes
close to the carrier- AND mooned them-
must have been an unofficial NAVY WIDE greeting for
the Russki’s!
Only if the f-35 can go fast enough to catch the flanker... Which it can’t.
Over Macho Grande?
You mean that Chinese pilot called “Wong Way”?
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