Free Republic

The Russian Air Force scrambled three fighter jets to escort a U.S. Air Force bomber away from Russian airspace Sunday at an undisclosed location over the Pacific Ocean, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported. “[A]ir defense radars on duty in the Eastern Military Region on Sunday spotted an air target over the Pacific Ocean that was approaching Russia’s airspace,” Russia’s National Defense Command Center told Russian media on September 26. “In order to identify and escort the foreign plane, three Sukhoi-35S fighter planes of the Eastern Military Region’s air defense were scrambled,” the command center said in a statement to...

The arrival of nine B-52 Super Fortress bombers at RAF Fairford overnight gives a clear indication of the timing of the long-forecast US strike on Saddam's Iraq and the kind of operation that President Bush has in mind. The B-52s are veterans of the Cold War. They carry huge payloads of conventional and satellite-guided bombs, JDAMs, and air-launched cruise missiles. The stationing of the planes at Fairford signalled the overture to the air campaign over Iraq in January 1991 and Nato bombing of Kosovo and Serbia in 1999. In the Gulf War in 1991, the tons of iron bombs dropped...