Yeah, shoot down an aircraft in international airspace. We used to do that to aircraft from smaller nations like Libya, but not the Soviet Union.
The sad part about this is that we had no assets in the area that could have scrambled from Germany to ‘escort’ the Russians out of the frigate’s operational area.
Not true. Maverick shot down 3 Russians over international waters in the 80’s.
DANGER ZONE!!!!!
If you think 30 feet off the deck of a US warship is “international airspace”, we don’t need your “insight”.
That was an act of war.
We should have shot them down and alerted to DEFCON 1.
“We used to do that to aircraft from smaller nations like Libya, but not the Soviet Union.”
Also, we didn’t just bounce Libyan planes in international airspace for something like this. Libya claimed 200 miles out as its territory. They clearly sent out fighters to enforce an illegal territorial claim. That is why they were shot down.
As for escorting them out of the area of a frigate, they do nothing to make them leave, they simply follow them till they depart. A US Navy ship or fleet doesn’t come with its very own flight restricted zone. They do however have a right to send fighters to be ready and follow them, paint them with radars if the captain is stupid enough to give out the intel trove.
But this is a lot of normal behavior at sea.