The US Air Force is complaining about Friday’s interception of a US B-52 Stratofortress bomber by the Russian military. The bomber was intercepted when it was in the Black Sea, approaching Russia.
The Air Force says the interception was “unsafe” and risked a midair collision. Russia has not addressed this directly, but likely has a lot of experience intercepting planes in the Black Sea, as they’ve been intercepting US spy planes at least twice a week for the past few months there.
Interceptions are common enough, but they are almost always of spy planes getting a bit close for comfort to the other side’s borders. That the US plane in this case was a long-range strategic bomber puts it into a different category, and likely raised more alarm from the Russians.
US officials said the plane was meant to “demonstrate NATO solidarity,” but that was the mission for entering the airspace of every NATO member, which Russia clearly is not. They didn’t explain why they were hanging around in Russia’s vicinity, except for the obvious possibility that they were there to participate in an incident that Air Force generals could then complain about.
The Pentagon thinks they can violate Enemy territory any time they want to but that isn’t the way things work.
Only after that same pentagon has made damn sure that Russia is seen as an “enemy”.
Our UK media always gets hysterical when the Russian TU95 Bears fly too close, but of course it is OK for NATO aircraft to do it too Russia.
What the hell is a B-52 doing in the Black Sea area, thousands of miles from home? Can you blame Russia for being concerned? How provocative of Washington!
amerikans require enemies to distract their peasants from the soulless, immoral society they live in…koestler compared amerikans to 5th century Romans: “a similarly contactless society populated by automatons…a similarly soulless politically corrupt everybody for themselves society”