A British Royal Air Force Typhoon and two Dutch F-16 fighter planes were scrambled today to confront a pair of TU-95 Russian bombers as they flew close to United Kingdom airspace.
The planes were sighted off the coast of Scotland, and were chased away without incident. Such flights, testing NATO air defense, were extremely common during the Cold War, and still happen a couple of times a year.
Normally the flights are scarcely covered by the media, but the current tension between NATO and Russia have everyone more on edge than usual, though it is unlikely the TU-95s, an extremely outdated propeller-powered bomber, were a serious military threat.
British officials also report a Russian destroyer, the Vice-Admiral Kulakov, is off the waters north of Scotland, though it is unclear if this deployment is at all related. Britain’s HMS Dragon is in the vicinity to “keep an eye” on the ship.
"TU-95s, an extremely outdated"
Oh, so do we have a new military aviation expert here? First of all TU-95 is an extremely reliable and UPGRADED TURBOPROP plane, mind you. The reason why they, together with the top modern TU-160 are still in service.
What would Ditz call the B-52 (prod. year.1952–62) and the likes, involved in countless genocidal missions worldwide, if not extremely outdated?
US ships and aircraft go where they damn well please all the time, but court journalists always characterize THAT as "protecting" or "monitoring" this or that, not as provocation.
It bugs the US government to no end that other militaries can also reach beyond their own borders.
These NATO morons and puppets of a certain state in the Middle East really want to mess around with the nuclear power Russia?!
Everyone who followed the events during the last 12 months knows WHO really is behind all this….
It is about Syria, Iran and the interests of a tiny little and extremely aggressive “democrazy”…..
Weird choice. Isn't Scotland having a referendum on independence by 2014? Does Russia need some lessons on not handing NATO free PR?
mayb scotland is gonna go with those
oil rich ruskies
I guarantee these so-called bombers had no payload capacity whatsoever, but have been retrofitted as signals intelligence collection platforms. It becomes useful to scream "bomber" at them whenever it serves US/NATO propaganda purposes, but flying in pairs in that area, doing that sort of thing? The Soviet/Russian Sigint program has been doing the exact same thing for 40 years. Don't believe the hype.
The TU 95 is a perfect example of Russia'a antiquated and ramshackle military.
The TU 95 is only three years older than its direct US counterpart, the B-52.
A lot of Russian military equipment is indeed "antiquated and ramshackle," but this particular class of planes has outlasted supposed successors in both the US and Russia.
Not sure if the "Bear" and the anti-submarine destroyer is just there as an elaborate PR campaign or for testing the waters. My guess would be submarine tracking. Especially Trident movements. Would annoy the hell out of the NATO powers if Russia would actively track their movements a bit, now and again. Not unlike China, Russia made some good advances with radar and sensor technology. And this is how someone would put them to use, as "message". This is all just conjecture of course. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.