Posted on 05/05/2014 8:39:09 PM PDT by Nachum
The Associated Press reported Monday that Gen. Herbert Carlisle, Commander of United States Air Forces in the Pacific, acknowledged a significant increase in the activities by Russian long-range strategic aircraft flying along the California coast.
There was no comment about whether the aircraft were nuclear capable, but it has not been since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s that Russian patrols have skirted the West Coast and California.
Gen. Herbert J. "Hawk" Carlisle is the Commander of Pacific Air Forces; Air Component Commander for U.S. Pacific Command; and Executive Director, Pacific Air Combat Operations Staff, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. As the PACAF, he is responsible for Air Force activities spread over half the globe in a command that supports 45,000 Airmen serving principally in Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Alaska and Guam.
Speaking Monday, May 5th at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan Washington DC think tank, General Carlisle said there had been long-range Russian air patrols to the coast of California and a circumnavigation of the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. He noted that a U.S. F-15 fighter jet intercepted a Russian strategic bomber that had flown to Guam.
General Carlisle linked the increased activity and incursions to the situation in the Ukraine. He said Russia was demonstrating its capabilities and gathering intelligence on U.S. military exercises.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
This makes no sense.
U2s have been flying around LA for 50 + years
That patch is velcro’ed. Look closely around the flag and you will see that it looks like a flag patch on top of another patch. Then look just under the bottom right corner of the sign on his other shoulder and you will see the Velcro area with no patch.
Agreed. They’ve been flying around all along.
Yeah, enthusiasm for urban renewal...it’ll make ya go overboard!
We might miss Santa Barbara...
No news here other than they freaked out after 50 years of flights.
That is what bugs me and in coincidence of the other events.
How is that even believable?
How does a bit of hardware at 60,000 feet muck up your software code and you call it a glitch?
Either you were hacked or you weren't.
Your code is crap or it isn’t.
Maybe it has something to do with politics in the area. There are quite a few big shot, Liberaltarian constituents and politicians near LAX with lucrative ties to Russia since the ‘90s and before.
what U2? they were supposed to have been retired replaced by Global Hawk.
Global Hawk has shelved for years.
Cost to profit ratio..
U2 flys on because the dragon lady works
are they hauling the large standoff missiles? can our sensors tell if nuclear weapons are secreted aboard one of
these vintage antique warbirds?
turns out they have internal rotary launchers with kh-55 cruise missiles. so they have some potential to hold us at risk it the crew were sufficiently ‘motivated’.
TU 95 bears are bupkis, formidable like our old B 52 Strato fortress, workhorses like the U2, and I don’t take Ivan lightly but the TU 95 bears are old piles of crap.
We have them out gunned.
Of course Obama and the left are disarming us.
“I wish the article had told us how many miles off the California coast the Russian planes were flying.”
In the past, our fighter-interceptors met the TU-95 Bear bombers at the ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) and escorted the bombers as they flew along the 3 mile limit of the coast.
We also used to monitor the Soviet “fishing boat - ELINT” vessels and submarines trying to push into the 3 mile limit off the coast of such installations as the Vandenburg AFB missile test range. We sat in an observation post on the beach and watched them tool around off our coast with a pair of high power military binoculars.
Either you were hacked or you weren't.
Yeah, it's not as if civilian ATC hasn't dealt with high-performance aircraft before. But California has had a long slide since the old days. Apparently, the rot has seeped into their ATC.
Funny story about civilian ATC and the U-2's big sister, the SR-71:
On a typical training mission, we would take off near Sacramento, refuel over Nevada, accelerate into Montana, obtain high Mach over Colorado, turn right over New Mexico, speed across the Los Angeles Basin, run up the West Coast, turn right at Seattle, then return to Beale. Total flight time: two hours and 40 minutes.One day, high above Arizona , we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was 'Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,' ATC responded. The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, ' Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.' We did not hear another transmis sion on that frequency all the way to the coast.
Ca used to be a cool place.
Sorry to give you a clue, but many of today's grunts are very illiterate.
According to mission and unit, the flag patch is on velcro so it can be removed. Ever seen a SEAL wearing a flag on his camis? Sheesh, much of what is on army and Marine uniforms is now attached by velcro. Do some research on military.com.
He calmly reported that there was a problem and the smoke was obscuring that "view of Mt Baldy That we all love so well"
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