This is not the kind of news you want to be reading less than two weeks after President Joe Biden warned that the world was facing Armageddon for the first time since 1962.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command on Tuesday issued a statement that two Russian long-range bombers had been spotted and intercepted near Alaska.
“Two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter aircraft intercepted the Russian aircraft which remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” read the statement (reproduced below).
The bombers were “positively identified” as Russian Tu-95 Bear-H bombers, an aircraft National Interest once described as “a Monster You Never Want to See.”
“The Bear’s original intended mission was fairly clear-cut: in the event the Cold War became really hot, dozens of individual Bears would fly across the Arctic Circle and drop nuclear bombs on targets over the United States,” National Interest reported late last year.
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“The Bear is still flying across the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean in the twenty-first century,” wrote Sebastien Roblin, a journalist who specializes in aerospace and defense topics. “One of its principal missions can be described as trolling other countries.”
And that may have been their mission on Monday in probing the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, particularly given that NORAD said that “recent Russian activity in the North American ADIZ is not seen as a threat nor is the activity seen as provocative.”
That almost sounds like NORAD pointedly rolling its collective eyes at Mother Russia and murmuring, “Whatever.”
But this incident, regardless of how NORAD describes it, wasn’t like previous ones. The geopolitical situation has shifted. This “fly by” occurred 13 days after Biden warned an audience at a Democratic fundraising event on Oct. 6 that the end may very well be nigh.
Will Putin resort to nuclear weapons if things continue to go badly for him in Ukraine?
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Biden said.
Of course, that may simply have been exaggerated rhetoric designed to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin away from deploying nuclear weapons in his apparently ill-conceived war with Ukraine.
Let’s hope so, because National Interest was right. The Bear-H bomber is, indeed, a monster I never want to see.
The NORAD statement follows in its entirety:
PRESS RELEASE | Oct. 18, 2022
NORAD detects, tracks, identifies and intercepts Russian aircraft entering Air Defense Identification Zone
Alaskan NORAD Region
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska – On 17 October, the Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Region detected, tracked, positively identified and intercepted two Russian Tu-95 Bear-H bombers entering and operating within the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).
Two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter aircraft intercepted the Russian aircraft which remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace.
The recent Russian activity in the North American ADIZ is not seen as a threat nor is the activity seen as provocative. NORAD tracks and positively identifies foreign military aircraft that enter the ADIZ. NORAD routinely monitors foreign aircraft movements and as necessary, escorts them from the ADIZ.
NORAD employs a layered defense network of satellites, ground-based radars, airborne radar and fighter aircraft to track and identify aircraft and inform appropriate actions. We remain ready to employ a number of response options in defense of North America and Arctic sovereignty.
