Russian Bombers Buzz US Base In Guam

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 8-9-2007 | Adrian Blomfield

[blam]

Russian bombers buzz US base in Guam

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 7:36pm BST 09/08/2007

Russian bombers are reported to have buzzed an American military base for the first time since the Cold War when they flew over the Pacific island of Guam.

Google Map: The island of Guam in the West Pacific

Moscow said that US fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the two Tupolev-95 warplanes as they resumed the Cold War era practice of flying over Western offshore military installations in a mission on Wednesday.

The incident, seen as the latest attempt by a revitalised Russia to project its military might, is likely to have unnerved the Pentagon and caused further perplexity at the State Department over the Kremlin's mercurial course.

The US military was silent about the mid-air confrontation but the Russians were happy to boast about it.

"It was always the tradition of our long-range aviation to fly far into the ocean, to meet (US) aircraft carriers and greet (US) pilots visually," Maj Gen Pavel Androsov, the head of long-range aviation in the Russian air force, told a press conference in Moscow.

"Yesterday we revived this tradition."

According to the general, two Tupolev-95 bombers flew from Blagoveshchensk, on Russia's border with China, to the US naval base at Guam in the West Pacific during a 13-hour round trip on Wednesday.

Capable of carrying nuclear bombs, the Tu-95 was the Soviet Union's aviation icon. A lumbering beast, it was instantly recognisable to every US fighter pilot who had to escort the aircraft on its regular sorties down the American east coast.

A new generation of pilots may now have to get used to doing the same.

According to Gen Androsov, American fighters took off from an aircraft carrier and tracked the bombers until they left Guam's airspace. "We exchanged smiles and returned home," he said.

Russia's nuclear forces: Click for interactive map

The return of the airborne games of cat-and-mouse is likely to elicit queasier grins in Western capitals, where military chiefs will be puzzling over how to respond to Russia's increasingly frequent displays of defiance.

Last month RAF Tornado fighters were twice forced to scramble after Tu-95 bombers flew close to British airspace.

Keen to get their share of attention — and perhaps the approval of President Vladimir Putin — Russia's most senior admirals last week called for the establishment of a permanent naval base in the Mediterranean for the first time since the Cold War.

East-West relations also came under renewed strain after the United States appeared to blame Russia for a missile strike against Georgia on Monday that took the diplomatic crisis between the two ex-Soviet neighbours to new depths.

"The US condemns the Aug 6 rocket attack against Georgia," said Sean McCormack, a state department spokesman. "We praise Georgia's continuing restraint in the face of this air attack and call for the urgent clarification of the facts surrounding this incident."

Moscow has strongly denied involvement in the incident and has accused Georgia of "provocation".

Russia's military posturing is partly a desperate desire to show that the armed forces have recovered from the decline in the penurious 1990s, when planes were frequently grounded because the air force could not pay its fuel bills.

The vocal condemnation of Russia's mission last week to plant a flag under the North Pole, a stunt that would once have been laughed off, was a telling example of the international community's growing distrust of Mr Putin.

[RusIvan]

Perhaps a B-2 dropping love letters over Moscow on a Friday night. “We can see you, but you can’t see us”.==

B-2 cann’t get that far. It will be sitting duck as it croses the border. It will be the next Powers (U2) like matter nothing more:).
Accually it isn’t no stealth from russian point of view. It is visible on anti-aircraft russian radars. Notice: the russian radars works on the meter band.