8 years ago
5
Russian Bombers Intercepted on Independence Day
As Americans were celebrating the Fourth of July holiday, four Russian long-range bomber aircraft flew close enough to the US shores that they were intercepted by military fighter jets. The first set of two bombers flew near Alaska and just 30 minutes later a separate set flew far off the west coast of California.
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http://abcnews.go.com
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The Russians have been doing a lot of this lately not just to the U.S. The British,Finland and Sweden are 3 that I can think of and it's just not planes but subs too.
Russia likes to regularly "test" other countries' military response times. Basically they send fighter jets or tactical submarines near or in foreign airspace/waters and see how long the local military responds. They tend to do this every few months, mostly in European countries.
I remember a number of stories that popped up in the last couple of years about Russian subs that allegedly made it close to the US coastline in the Gulf of Mexico. This article from 2012 talks about a detection that did not take place until after the sub allegedly left the Gulf. Here's another one on that very same story.
That's probably so the Russians wont really know our reaction times. If we were to respond as soon as possible, they would know our capacities very well.
This is a fairly routine occurrence for all NATO participants. It's just an easy way to test the air defense network.
Post cold war it had died off for a bit. However in recent years Putin has ramped up these incursions in response to chilling relations with the west.