Posted on 02/14/2008 10:41:29 AM PST by Ivan the Terrible
Last Saturday, four Russian Tupolev-95 bombers took off in the middle of the night from an airfield at Ukrainka. Two of them headed for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its escort, the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.
As two of the bombers got within cruise-missile range of the American ships, 500 miles away, four F/A-18 Hornets were launched from the Nimitz and intercepted them 50 miles out. One Tu-95 was escorted as it flew 2,000 feet above the Nimitz. The other Tupolev was followed as it circled at a distance of 58 miles.
One of the Tupolevs from Ukrainka also flew over the rocky Japanese island of Sofugan for three minutes. The Japanese are full participants in U.S. missile defense plans, having acquired U.S. Aegis destroyers armed with the Standard-3 anti-missile system as well as the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries.
The Japanese Self-Defense Force scrambled 24 aircraft, including F-15 fighters and an E-767 radar plane. They were joined by F/A-18s from the Nimitz on patrol in the western Pacific. Japan has never signed a peace treaty to formally end World War II with Moscow, and four islands seized by the Soviets in 1945 off Japan's northern coast remain in dispute.
The Cold War may just be coming back with a vengeance. As Putin said when he announced the resumption of long-range bomber patrols: "Combat duty has begun." Will an Obama or a Clinton have the courage Reagan showed when he deployed Pershing missiles in West Germany in response to the Soviet SS-20 threat?
Not likely.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Last November President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to construct a new space center, to be named Vostochny, in the Amur Region.
Putin told his last annual news conference as Russian president that, "I do not consider the plans for the construction of the space center are fantastic. We are developing Plesetsk, we will remain at the Baikonur, but we must take into account that some launches could be made from Russian territory, both for civilian and military purposes."
The next time those Russian Bears fly anywhere near one of our ships we should just blow it out of the sky.
I’ve said it many times before and it bears repeating. Ike should have listened to Patton in May of 1945.......
This is the kind of stuff we routinely encountered during the Cold War. Our forces have never sweated this kind of stuff.
Well now, that is an original name.
U.S. strike range notwithstanding, that's the real reason.
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