Russian nuclear-capable bombers 'tested' US air defences 16 times in last 10 days
Published time: August 07, 2014 20:58
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Russian Tu-95 bombers (Reuters/Shamil Zhumatov)
Air Force,Intelligence,Military, Planes,Russia, Security,USA
Russian strategic nuclear bombers and other military aircraft entered US air defense identification zones (ADIZs) at least 16 times over the past ten days, American defense officials confirmed on Thursday.
“Over the past week, NORAD has visually identified Russian aircraft operating in and around the US air defense identification zones,” said Maj. Beth Smith, spokeswoman for US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
Smith sought to downplay the incursions that she called “a spike in activity,” telling the Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz that the flights were assessed as routine training missions and exercises.
But an unnamed defense official familiar with the incursion reports disagreed with Smith’s assessment. “These are not just training missions,” the official told Gertz, saying that Russian strategic nuclear forces appear to be “trying to test our air defense reactions, or our command and control systems.”
NORAD scrambled fighter jets several times when Russian strategic aircraft flew along US ADIZs. The planes included a mix of Tu-95 Bear H heavy bombers and Tu-142 Bear F maritime reconnaissance aircraft, as well as one IL-20 intelligence collection aircraft, Smith said.
The bomber flights took place mainly along the Alaskan air defense identification zone that covers the Aleutian Islands and the continental part of the state, and one incursion involved entry into Canada’s air defense zone, she added.
United States ADIZ boundaries, 11 Feb 2010 (Department of Defense/National Geospatial Intelligence Agency)
“Such aerial bravado has been rare since the fall of the Soviet Union,” News.com.au wrote.“Until now.”
“And it all appears to be a direct result of the cooling of relations between the West and Russia over the invasion of Crimea and the shooting-down of MH17,” the Australian News Corp site added.
During the Cold War, Soviet bombers sought to trigger US air defenses as preparation for a potential nuclear conflict.
The recent spike in activity after a surface-to-air missile brought down the Malaysia Airlines plane is not the first time Russian military planes were detected in US ADIZs this summer. On June 9, a pair of Tu-95 Bear H aircraft maintained by Russia came close to US airspace during practice bombing while four of the planes were conducting bombing runs near Alaska, a NORAD spokesman told Gertz.
“After tracking the bombers as they flew eastward, two of the four Bears turned around and headed west toward the Russian Far East,” he wrote of the June incident.“The remaining two nuclear-capable bombers then flew southeast and around 9:30 P.M. entered the US northern air defense zone off the coast of Northern California.”
Those two aircraft, Gertz added, made it within 50 miles of the coast before turning around after a US F-15 intercepted them.
Russian aircraft have also made incursions into other countries’ airspace this year. In June, the UK’s Royal Air Force scrambled Typhoon fighter jets to intercept four flights of aircraft in the airspace around the Baltic states. The planes included advanced Tu-22M Backfire bombers, Su-27 Flanker interceptors, an A-50 Mainstay radar aircraft and a transport aircraft, News.com.au wrote. Russian-owned Tu-95 bombers skirted UK airspace and have come close to US property in both Guam and California, The Aviationist reported in May.
In an April incident in international airspace between Russia and Japan, two Russian Su-27 Flanker interceptors flew beneath a US Air Force reconnaissance plane, then“popped up” ahead of the jet, which was forced to take evasive maneuvers, according to News.com.au.
The United States has been flying spy missions of its own, however. Over the weekend, US officials confirmed Swedish media reports that an American spy plane invaded Sweden’s airspace in mid-July. The maverick plane was spying on Russia when it was intercepted, and was evading a Russian fighter jet when it entered Swedish airspace without permission. Air traffic control had denied the Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joint entrance, Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper said. The incident occurred on July 18, the day after MH17 was shot down.
Obama Allows Limited Airstrikes on ISIS
By HELENE COOPER, MARK LANDLER and ALISSA J. RUBIN AUG. 7, 2014
“I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” President Obama said Thursday night. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
- The president insisted the twin military operations did not amount to a full-scale re-engagement in Iraq. But the relentless advance of the militants, whom he described as “barbaric,” has put them within a 30-minute drive of Erbil, raising an immediate danger for the American diplomats, military advisers and other citizens who are based there.
- Iraqi Yazidi people who fled their homes in Sinjar took shelter at Bajid Kandal refugee camp in Dohuk Province on Thursday. CreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times
While Mr. Obama has authorized airstrikes, there had not yet been any as of late Thursday. But a senior administration official said after the speech that as conditions in Iraq deteriorated in recent days, the United States had worked with Iraqi security forces and Kurdish fighters to coordinate the response to ISIS advances. The official said the cooperation had included airstrikes by Iraqi forces against ISIS targets in the north.
Kurdish and Iraqi officials said that airstrikes were carried out Thursday night on two towns in northern Iraq seized by ISIS — Gwer and Mahmour, near Erbil. The New York Times on its website Thursday quoted Kurdish and Iraqi officials as saying that the strikes were carried out by American planes.
The cargo planes assigned to dropping food and water over the mountainside were one C-17 and two C-130 aircraft. They were escorted by a pair of F-18 jet-fighters, the administration official said. The cargo aircraft were over the drop zone for about 15 minutes, and flew at a relatively low altitude, the official said.
For Mr. Obama, who has steadfastly avoided being drawn into the sectarian furies of the Middle East, the decision raises a host of thorny questions, injecting the American military into Iraq’s broader political struggle — something Mr. Obama said he would not agree to unless Iraq’s three main ethnic groups agreed on a national unity government.
The decision could also open Mr. Obama to charges that he is willing to use American military might to protect Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities but not to prevent the slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims, either in Iraq or neighboring Syria.
But the president said the imminent threat to Erbil and the dire situation unfolding on Mount Sinjar met both his criteria for deploying American force: protecting American lives and assets, and averting a humanitarian disaster.
“When we have the unique capacity to avert a massacre, the United States cannot turn a blind eye,” he said.
Mr. Obama has been reluctant to order direct military action in Iraq while Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki remains in office, but in recent weeks there have been repeated pleas from the Kurdish officials for weapons and assistance as ISIS militants have swept across northwestern Iraq. The militants, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, view Iraq’s majority Shiite and minority Christians and Yazidis, a Kurdish religious group, as infidels.
Deliberations at the White House went on all day Thursday as reports surfaced that administration officials were considering either humanitarian flights, airstrikes or both.
Shortly after 6 p.m., the White House posted a photo of Mr. Obama consulting his national security team in the Situation Room. To his right was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. Watching from across the table were Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and her principal deputy, Antony J. Blinken. On the wall behind them, the clock recorded the time: 10:37 a.m.
Mr. Obama made only one public appearance, a rushed visit to Fort Belvoir, Va., where he signed into law a bill expanding access to health care for veterans. But aides suggested he might make a statement Thursday night. Before getting into his limousine, Mr. Obama was observed holding an intense conversation with his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, stabbing his finger several times for emphasis. Minutes after signing the bill and shaking a few hands, he rushed back to his limousine and returned to the White House.
Later, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, confirmed that Mr. Obama was weighing action in Iraq and warned about the danger of a humanitarian catastrophe. But he declined to offer any details about a potential military operation, prompting a storm of questions about why, if the danger was so dire, Mr. Obama was not acting immediately.
Once Mr. Obama made the decision to approve the humanitarian airdrops on Thursday, administration officials said, the decision for airstrikes became more likely. For one thing, the American C-130 planes that would be likely to drop the food and medical supplies fly low and heavy, and would release the supplies from 500 to 1,200 feet.
Forces with ISIS are not believed to have surface-to-air missiles, but they do have machine guns that could hit the planes at that altitude, according to James M. Dubik, a retired Army lieutenant general who oversaw the training of the Iraqi Army in 2007 and 2008.
“These are low and slow aircraft,” General Dubik said. At the very minimum, he said, the United States would have to be prepared for “some defensive use of air power to prevent” the militant group from attacking American planes, or going after the humanitarian supplies themselves.
Military officials have also repositioned satellites for surveillance. The risk to the American crew of the C-130 planes conducting the humanitarian mission “would be much higher if we did not have improved reconnaissance and a protective air capacity,” General Dubik said.
If ordered, the Air Force could use both drones and F-16 fighter jets that are already deployed in the region, while the Navy could use F-18 fighters as well, military officials said.
But it is one thing to use air power to defend a humanitarian operation. Offensive strikes on ISIS targets in northern Iraq would take American involvement in the conflict to a new level, demonstrating deep concern with ISIS’s offensive shift toward the Kurds.
Ever since Sunni militants with ISIS took over Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, on June 10, Iraqis have feared that Baghdad, to the south, was the insurgents’ goal. But in recent weeks, the militant group has concentrated on trying to push the Kurds back from areas where Sunnis also live along the border between Kurdistan and Nineveh Province. It has taken on the powerful Kurdish militias, which were thought to be a bulwark against the advance, and which control huge oil reserves in Kurdistan and broader parts of northern Iraq.
On Thursday, one Kurdish official said in an interview that Kurdish troops had pulled back in the expectation that there would be airstrikes, perhaps by Turkey and the United States. President François Hollande of France pledged his country’s support to forces battling the militant group as well.
Helene Cooper and Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Alissa J. Rubin from Dohuk, Iraq. Thom Shanker, Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting from Washington.
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