Far East Cynic

Shades of the good old days……..

Russian Bear bombers on the prowl that is. Back in the day, yours truly was awakened from romancing his cruise sock to race to the alert bird, gear in hand-with the goal of getting airborne in 30 minutes of less. The Russians were coming! The Russians were coming!

Usually we got notice right about the time they left Tashkent and had time to think about when to launch to intercept them. In the Indian Ocean, we usually got examined by Il-38 Mays not Bears. They saved those for the North Atlantic or Pacific.

Sometimes though they did not-and the race was on. A Bear moved pretty fast over the ocean, usually about 420 knots, and our requirement was to intercept them no later than 200nm from the carrier battle group. That sounds easy, but sometimes it was a real effort and your window to make the correct decision could turn out to be only 30-40 minutes.

Still, it was exciting, heady stuff- “going toe to toe with the Russki’s”.

Yesterday 3 Russian TU-95 bombers briefly violated Japanese airspace and the JASDF burned a bunch of dead dinosaurs chasing them down. So too did the US Navy evidently.

A Russian air force bomber briefly violated Japanese airspace over an uninhabited island just south of Tokyo on Saturday, the Foreign Ministry said.

The three-minute flyby over Sofugan in the Izu island chain by a Tupolev 95 ended following warnings by Japanese air force fighter jets, said Foreign Ministry official Kotaro Otsuki.

The ministry immediately lodged a protest with the Russian Embassy in Tokyo and demanded an explanation, Otsuki said.

A switchboard operator at the embassy said no one was available to comment Saturday.

Japan’s navy scrambled 22 fighter jets, including F-15s, and two airborne warning and control aircraft known as AWACs, a Defense Ministry official said on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

Here is some Japanese news footage of the event-pretty cool pix of a Bear if you ask me:

  1. While I, too, echo Indiana’s sentiments that 22 fighter jets appear to be a tad too many (by about 20), this incident serves to remind us that Russia is back to the same-old same-old. More reason why we need to remain on high alert and forget about closing bases and decreasing the size of our Military.

    P.S. I hope your cold is getting better.

  2. 22 is not so many really when you consider that they are :

    1) Launching as sections (2 aircraft).

    2) Japanese fighters cannot tank.

    3) The Japanese Coastline is 1000 miles long and once interecepted you can be damn sure they are going to keep aircraft on CAP stations or in escort till they are well established on the way back to Russia.

    4) They probably launched from multiple bases in Japan

    5) Chasing Bears is FUN! 🙂