via Free Beacon.
The Russian Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers were equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and were followed by U.S. jets as they circumnavigated Guam on Feb. 12 local time—hours before President Barack Obama’s state of the union address.I would so love to know whether these were live or training munitions. If they carried inert warheads on a practice mission that's one thing. If these were live and it was a show of force then that's something else entirely.
Air Force Capt. Kim Bender, a spokeswoman for the Pacific Air Force in Hawaii, confirmed the incident to the Washington Free Beacon and said Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, “scrambled and responded to the aircraft.”
“The Tu-95s were intercepted and left the area in a northbound direction. No further actions occurred,” she said. Bender said no other details would be released “for operational security reasons.”
I think people are over reacting somewhat.
ReplyDeleteThey started them over the UK a few years back, but they are rare, because the Ruskies are too poor to maintain them.
Russia remains as hostile as always, but its a hollow threat, and getting hollower by the day.
A turboprop from the 50's, thats their threat?
the US flies a jet from the 50's in the form of the B-52. in many ways the pinnacle of bomber development was reached in the 1950's. everything else has really been either tactical bombers or failures. the B-1? not really a success and the USAF relies on the B-52. the B-2? we only have 19 and they're not exactly a success either.
Deletein my opinion the TU-95 can be considered a credible threat. additionally it doesn't take many of them if you're slinging nukes.
try 20 B-2s.
DeleteYou have never seen a TU-95 Maritime strike aircraft loaded with Kitchen missiles that may or may not be tipped with nuclear or a large conventional warhead going buster maybe three or four hundred miles per hour at 100 feet or less while able to launch the Kitchens at 300 nm travelling at mach 4.6 and carrying either a one ton RDX or 300~1000 kt nuke.
DeleteThe Russian tactics in the Med was to do this with a TU-95 and a ToT launch from over the horizon at very low altitude. All in training! Be advised The worlds largest Hydrogen bomb was carried by this 1950's Turbo Prop.
There is very little reason to carry training warheads after spending the time and resources to fly to Guam. The best way to train and get sure results of whether you can depend on the crew and trust them to fly live nukes into an adversaries main bases without Defecting with the weapon and aircraft or going rogue and actually nuking that main base starting an un wanted world war or at the very least alerting and scaring the population of America into a harsh reprisal ala Pearl harbor circa 1940 even if the POTUS did not wish to go to war politically he would have to. Much as George Bush had to make war after 9/11 and FDR did.
ReplyDeleteAt some point a live weapon has to be carried just to ensure a strike could take place even on a routine mission that turned into a strike at short notice.
Trust! They must trust their forces and we must trust the leaders of the forces also to fly nukes on missions of availability for potential strikes.
I believe this is a rehearsal for when our leaders drop our guard enough for any riposte to be survivable by our enemies. When Bears are over Hawaii at the same time as Guam and Diego Garcia and armed with nukes it will be obvious what the message is.
I see Obama doing the same leadership tactics with this as he has done with other notable failures by Organizing the White House leadership community of democrats and letting a subordinate who is totally incompetent and unable to do the job make the go/No Go decision based on party line and ideology and lead to three nuked out advanced Naval/Air and Amphib bases while our carriers sit waiting to be SLEP or fueled much less manned.
The Democrats and Roosevelt dropped our guard back in 1940 in front of the Japanese and look where that got us.
Obama is setting us up for a sucker punch.
These flights are part of a strategic messaging campaign ahead of the NATO defense minister's meeting in Brussels. The Russians are not happy with NATO missile defense and the European Phased Adaptive Approach that will see 3-4 DDGs stationed in Rota, Spain. It doesn't help that the SM-3 (Block IA[?]) was just tested successfully against a medium range ballistic missile. As such, the missiles were likely conventional, but live, warheads.
ReplyDeletegotta say, they are very good looking.
ReplyDeleteRussia is wasting oil dollars to flying bears and buying Mistrales(for whom we don't have compatible fuel btw).
ReplyDeleteIts taboo to spend oil dollars to decriminalize police & healthcare & education -- most corrupted, hated and despised professions now. Oil dollars only for "families", war toys, and Caucasus where "Kadaffi model" have been recreated in response of killing russians and by russians money.
Every such "Potemkin village" flying or sailing just make my blood boils.