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:

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