Posted on 04/23/2014 10:36:04 AM PDT by MeshugeMikey
Two Russian surveillance planes which flew close to UK airspace have been chased away by an RAF jet fighter.
The aircraft, believed to be Tupolev 95s, were spotted off the coast of northeast Scotland.
They turned away from Britain when an RAF Typhoon was scrambled from Leuchars airbase, near Dundee, where crews are on standby to intercept unidentified aircraft at a moment's notice.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
How usual/unusual is this nowadays?
Im not certain pf the frequency of these “close encounters”
Depends. Does the UK have an “oppressed Russian minority?”
They may just have to leave that job up to the Scottish Air Farce next year. Unless they blow their entire budget on free stuff.
Bears? Geez, that was an old design in the 80s.
Unlike our B-52s, that are "venerable". Not old. :-)
If they were Tu-95 Bears, then they heard them coming a long way off. There’s no mistaking a Bear for anything else.
The aircraft, believed to be Tupolev 95s, were spotted off the coast of northeast Scotland.The Tu-95 carried and dropped the AN602 Tsar Bomba, the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.
Yes. Viggo Mortensen was almost murdered with a linoleum knife in the film Eastern Promises. That should meet the criteria for invasion.
TU-95s were so noisy that under the right conditions they could be picked up on the SOSUS arrays.
I did these intercepts a quite a few times in the late 60’s & 70’s.
We’d launch 2 F-4’s off the ready cats, we have one on his 6 and the other would come up on his port side.
We’d nod at each other, he’d open his bombbay doors and the guy at the 6 would fly up underneath and have a look to see if he was carrying weapons.
Then we would take up positions at his 9 oclock and his 4 oclock and make obsene jestures ant each other..
It’s amazing to see how creative bored airmen can come up with
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RAF_Tyhoon_Russian_Intercept.jpg
That tactic was used against us on one occasion when an F-15 (IIRC) went to investigate the open doors and found a slew of photographers. Pilot hit the speedbrake rather quickly.
Welcome to the Cold War II.
Its heating up just a tad
Old stories but bothered me me at the time...
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