US Sends Advanced Warplanes to Russian Frontier

Insists Deployments Not Aimed at 'Provoking' Russia

With US officials continuing to talk up “Russian aggression,” the Pentagon has sent a pair of F-22 Raptors to Romania, in what is being described as a “show of force” to prove US capabilities to deploy such planes anywhere in NATO territory.

The F-22s have been seldom-used by the Pentagon, annd repeatedly grounded by technical problems. Despite this, the program has cost an estimated $66 billion, well more than Russia spends on its entire military in a given year.

It’s the latest in a series of deployments of US military assets to the Russian frontier, all claiming Russian “aggression” as a justification, despite a lack of Russia actually doing anything beyond deployments reacting to the US buildup.

The pilots denied the F-22s were deployed to “provoke anybody,” though one of the pilots also referenced Russian intercepts of US warplanes along their border as a cause for the deployment, saying they “just want to encourage them to do that in a safe way.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.