The current administration has bent over backwards since the Ukrainian brouhaha began this year to reassure the public the Cold War isn't breaking out all over again. I'm thinkin' someone needs to tell the Rooshians that. From an article in the Washington Free Beacon ("Russian Strategic Bombers Near Canada Practice Cruise Missile Strikes on US"):
The ol' Chinese curse has come to pass: we're truly living in interesting times.
It hardly ever fails: what's old is new again. One wonders when the ol' "duck and cover" stuff will be re-purposed. Then again, given the administration's "it ain't there if I can't see it" approach to foreign affairs, little or nothing will be done. It'll be bid'niz as usual.
A 3rd Wing F-22 Raptor escorts a Russian Air Force Tu-95 Bear bomber near Nunivak Island, 2007. It was the first intercept of a Bear bomber for an F-22 which was alerted out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson’s Combat Alert Center. (Courtesy photo, Wikimedia Commons) Two Russian strategic bombers conducted practice cruise missile attacks on the United States during a training mission last week that defense officials say appeared timed to the NATO summit in Wales.
The Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers were tracked flying a route across the northern Atlantic near Iceland, Greenland, and Canada’s northeast.
Analysis of the flight indicated the aircraft were conducting practice runs to a pre-determined “launch box”—an optimum point for firing nuclear-armed cruise missiles at U.S. targets, said defense officials familiar with intelligence reports.
Disclosure of the nuclear bombing practice comes as a Russian general last week called for Moscow to change its doctrine to include preemptive nuclear strikes on the United States and NATO.
Gen. Yuri Yakubov, a senior Defense Ministry official, was quoted by the state-run Interfax news agency as saying that Russia’s 2010 military doctrine should be revised to identify the United States and the NATO alliance as enemies, and clearly outline the conditions for a preemptive nuclear strike against them.
Yakubov said among other needed doctrinal changes, “it is necessary to hash out the conditions under which Russia could carry out a preemptive strike with the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces”—Moscow’s nuclear forces.
The ol' Chinese curse has come to pass: we're truly living in interesting times.
I notice that Bear has no tail gunner station anymore. Obviously the guns are servo driven now, probably by the Navigator :-)
ReplyDeleteThe Bear-H is the latest model, and has the cruise missiles. It can loiter off of New York City for a whole shift, and still have fuel left to go back to Murmansk, or Havana.
I think the tail gunner's position is obscured by the horizontal stabilizer, no?
DeleteThat window at yer link is on the "other" side of the aircraft and I think there was only one of those. Then again, I'm not an Ursus Major expert. ;-)
ReplyDeleteRed Star Rising is on tgt here, Buck. The guns in the "up" position during the *Cold War* was meant to signal a peaceful tng msn. The LACK of that positioning can ONLY be read as a very determined signal of a Russian leadership group (read Putin & his generals) that no longer fears America and is sending a very UNSUBTLE message in their positioning of the guns "at the ready."
ReplyDeleteYeah, Putin's getting pretty froggy of late. And there's not a damned thing we can do when he jumps, especially with that putz that currently lives at 1600 Penna Ave in charge.
DeleteHere's some pics (other side too), and you're right the gun still has windows above, but I can't imagine anyone in that position as the new guns fire. It would beat them to death :-)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/24/russian-tu-95-bear-aircraft-scotland_n_5208543.html
Very nice link! Timely, too. The most interesting thing (to me) was the fact there were a PAIR of Bears in the air during that intercept.
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