Russian bomber interception by NATO treble

[David Guyatt]

Poke a stick at a wasp's nest and see what happens...

Nato jets track 'unusual' Russian bomber sorties

Four groups of aircraft intercepted in past 24 hours - and similar incidents are running at three times the rate of 2013

Norwegian Air Force F-16AM Fighting Falcon (L) accompanying a Russian Air Force Tupolev Tu-95MS Photo: EPA








By Reuters

12:32AM GMT 30 Oct 2014


Nato aircraft tracked Russian strategic bombers over the Atlantic and Black Sea on Wednesday and sorties of fighters over the Baltic in what the Western alliance called an unusual burst of activity at a tense time in East-West relations.

In all, Nato said in a statement, its jets had intercepted four groups of Russian aircraft in about 24 hours since Tuesday, and some were still on manoeuvres late on Wednesday afternoon.

"These sizeable Russian flights represent an unusual level of air activity over European airspace," the alliance said.

A spokesman stressed there had been no violation of Nato airspace - as there was last week when a Russian spy plane briefly crossed Estonia's border. But such high numbers of sorties in one day were, he said, rare in recent years.

In the biggest exercise, four Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers, a Cold War icon since the 1950s and Russia's equivalent of the US B-52, flew out over the Norwegian Sea in the early hours of Wednesday, accompanied by four refuelling tanker aircraft.

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Norwegian F-16s were scrambled and tracked the formation, which eventually broke up, with six planes heading back toward Russia and two Tu-95s flying on south over the North Sea, where they were intercepted by British Typhoons. Portuguese F-16s later tracked them in the Atlantic before they turned for home.
A Norwegian military spokesman said: "We see Russian aircraft near our airspace on a regular basis but what was unusual is that it was a large number of aircraft and pushed further south than we normally see."
In a second incident, two Tu-95s accompanied by two fighter jets were being tracked by Turkish aircraft over the Black Sea on Wednesday afternoon, while flights of seven Russian warplanes were monitored on Tuesday and Wednesday over the Baltic Sea.
On Tuesday, German and Danish planes were involved in tracking them as well as aircraft from non-Nato states Sweden and Finland. On Wednesday, Portuguese F-16s posted in the Baltic intercepted a similar group of fighters and fighter-bombers.
Nato said it had conducted more than 100 such intercepts of Russian aircraft this year so far, about three times as many as in 2013, before the confrontation with Moscow over separatist revolts in ex-Soviet Ukraine soured relations.
President Vladimir Putin has committed to reinvigorating Russia's armed forces, which had been undermined by the economic troubles that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tension over Ukraine has seen the Nato alliance step up its vigilance, especially on its eastern frontiers with Russia.
The spokesman said there was no particular reason for concern over Russian warplanes exercising their right to fly in international airspace but that such sorties were shadowed by Nato aircraft as a precaution and to protect civil air traffic.

[Magda Hassan]

I heard the UK intercepted a Russian cargo plane today. Sonic boom and all.

[Magda Hassan]

Poke a stick at a wasp's nest and see what happens...

On Tuesday, German and Danish planes were involved in tracking them as well as aircraft from non-Nato states Sweden and Finland.

::Non NATO?

[David Guyatt]

The Daily Bellylaugh strikes again. I think they employ out of work circus clowns and rebrand them as "journalists" - and then send them to the "Bridge" for briefings - with the latter being happy to oblige by filling their heads with nonsense.

[David Guyatt]

Keep the pot boiling...

RAF intercepts Russian bomber approaching UK airspace

Incident follows Norwegian interception of two Russian bombers on Wednesday and comes as Nato warns of spike in activity

• Chris Johnston and agencies
  
• theguardian.com, Saturday 1 November 2014 17.32 GMT
  

The Russian Bear aircraft photographed from an RAF Typhoon. Photograph: SAC Robyn Stewart/MoD Crown Copy/PA

The RAF has intercepted Russian military aircraft as they neared UK airspace for the second time this week, the Ministry of Defence has said. The Soviet-era Tupolev Tu-95 aircraft also known as a Bear bomber flying in international airspace was intercepted by Typhoon fighters from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland on Friday and escorted through British skies.
A spokeswoman said the Russian aircraft had been picked up by the RAF control and reporting centre at Boulmer, Northumberland, which scrambled the Typhoons.
The RAF pilots visually identified the Russian aircraft and escorted them through UK airspace, she said.
The intervention follows a similar incident on Wednesday, when two Bear bombers were tracked over the North Sea as Nato radars picked up a series of Russian formations engaged in "significant military manoeuvres" ranging from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
The exercises prompted Nato to warn of an "unusual" increase in Russian military flights in European airspace.
Its jets had intercepted four groups of Russian aircraft within 24 hours by Wednesday and some were still on manoeuvres late that afternoon.
The two Bears that neared Britain on Wednesday had been part of a larger formation of eight aircraft including four Il-78 tanker planes intercepted by Norwegian F-16 fighters in international airspace over the Norwegian Sea.
While six of the planes returned back towards Russia, the two Bears carried on towards the UK where they were picked up by Boulmer in Northumberland.
The bombers continued over the Atlantic to the west of Portugal, where they were intercepted by Portuguese air force F-16 fighters before turning back.
The Russian flight coincided with similar incidents over the Black Sea and the Baltic where Russian military formations were intercepted by Turkish fighters and Portuguese jets assigned to the Nato Baltic air-policing mission.
The distinctive Bear, which has two counter-rotating propellers on each engine, has been described as the 1950s equivalent of the US B-52. It was originally designed to carry two nuclear bombs to targets in the continental US.
More recent variants of the Bear have been used for maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare.
The aerial exercises come amid a background of months of heightened tensions between Moscow and the west following Russia's annexation of Crimea and military incursion into Ukraine.
Nato said it had conducted more than 100 such intercepts of Russian aircraft this year about three times as many as in 2013 before the confrontation with Moscow over separatist revolts in Ukraine soured relations.
President Vladimir Putin has committed to reinvigorating Russia's armed forces, which had been diminished by the economic woes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tension over Ukraine has seen Nato step up its vigilance, particularly for member countries that shared a border with Russia.
The spokesman said there was no particular reason for concern over Russian warplanes flying in international air space, but that such exercises were shadowed by Nato aircraft as a precaution and to protect civil air traffic.
RAF Typhoons were also scrambled on Wednesday to intercept a civilian plane that has aroused the suspicions of air traffic controllers. The jets created a sonic boom over Kent, alarming thousands of residents.
The Russian-made Antonov An-26 cargo airliner was escorted to Stansted airport after being intercepted by jets from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire when communication with the Latvian-registered plane was lost.
The plane, which was transporting car parts, was later allowed to continue on its original destination, Birmingham.

Point one. These are not "British skies" but international - so let's correct that premeditated error of fact. Secondly, every day for the entirety of the cold war these Russian bombers flew the same route down the North Sea off the UK and were "escorted" by the RAF.

The UK is such an arsehole when it comes to being a hand maiden of the US neocons, it's sickening.

[David Guyatt]

I prefer the word "boycott" which for me is an accurate statement - but the Indy likes to emphasise the nasty ol' Soviets aggressor propaganda story and use the word "snubs" instead.

Russia snubs nuclear security meeting

No delegation from Moscow at planning session for 2016 summit on preventing terrorists gaining weapons-grade material

• Associated Press in Vienna
  
• theguardian.com, Tuesday 4 November 2014 05.47 GMT
  
• Jump to comments (33)
  

T
he last of Bulgaria's highly enriched uranium being removed in 2008. Further countries have given up their stockpiles since Barack Obama took office. Photograph: Martin Argles/Guardian

Russia failed to show up at meeting planning a 2016 nuclear security summit, US and European officials said on Monday, leaving unclear Moscow's intentions for future participation in talks.
The officials were unsure whether Russia meant to boycott the summit itself or was staging a temporary show of displeasure over western condemnation and sanctions for its role in the unrest in Ukraine.
Three or four planning meetings are scheduled before the spring of 2016 when the summit is tentatively set to open. With Russia one of the world's five formally recognised nuclear powers, its input is crucial to setting an agenda.
In 2010 Barack Obama initiated a series of summits aimed at preventing terrorists from getting their hands on weapons-grade nuclear material. Since then the number of countries thought to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon has fallen from 39 to 25.
At the last summit this year in The Hague 35 countries pledged to turn international guidelines on nuclear security into national laws and allow independent scrutiny of their procedures for protecting their nuclear installations. The summit also featured new reduction commitments, with Japan, Italy and Belgium agreeing to cut their stocks of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.
At the same time there were setbacks. Russia was notably absent from the 35-nation agreement, along with China, India and Pakistan all nations with nuclear weapons.
Officials said that with the exception of Russia, all of the 54 countries that participated in this year's March summit attended the preparatory meeting in Washington.
Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, said the US regretted the Russian absence. "As far as the US is concerned the door remains open to their joining future such meetings," he said.
Nuclear analyst Kenneth Luongo said that even if Moscow did show up in 2016 its boycott of planning meetings "reflects horribly on the Russian priorities".

"The Russians, besides the United States, are the biggest possessor of nuclear material so if they are not involved in this, it sends a terrible signal about their prioritisation," he said. "And it sends a terrible signal about the 20-plus year co-operation between the United States and Russia on this agenda."
Luongo, a former senior nonproliferation official in the US government, said a chance to diminish the likelihood of nuclear terrorism was too important to be used as a political football.
Besides having a huge stockpile of nuclear material, Russia's "southern border is honeycombed with Islamic radicals", he said. "So this is not the issue on which to play petty politics."

[Peter Lemkin]

For a long time I've been warning people I speak to/with that because we never publicly solved Dallas [I believe we have privately] we got 9-11 [and much in between I'm skipping]; and because we never publicly solved 9-11 [here again, I believe we have disproven the official version as a total fraud - and knowingly so] a new and bigger false-flag event was going to be cooked up sooner rather than later. I'm sad to report that I start to get the ugly feeling that they [THEY!] are so insane with lust for power and money, money and power that the next one will involve in some way a fabricated [false-flag] nuclear 'incident' or near incident. I hope I'm wrong, but could these interceptions and bringing false attention to routine Russian bomber flights be the beginnings of the scenario?!.......let's hope not....but I'd put NOTHING in the category that our secret would-be masters would not stoop to...up to and including extermination of life on the Planet...as they are doing the 'slow' way [50-100 year plan] currently; so why not the 'quick' way......nuclear brinkmanship. They lost their chances in the 60s and 70s, but seem to be retooling those old plans....and here I thought Curtis LeMay and his ilk were long dead...how wrong I was......

[David Guyatt]

The outright BS continues, as the propaganda cooks keep up the hubble and bubble. Now Putin wants to invade Finland. What absolute bollocks.

Finland warns Europe is 'at the gates of a new cold war' in wake of Russian military activity



British jets had to escort' Russian bombers away from UK airspace twice in three days last week

ADAM WITHNALL

Wednesday 05 November 2014

Finland's president has reportedly warned that Europe is on the brink of "a new kind of cold war" in the wake of apparent military aggression from Russia.

[B][B]Sauli Niinisto said the US and EU were failing to take Vladimir Putin's actions seriously, even after he annexed Crimea and after repeated reports of Russian involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Advisers to the Russian President have previously warned that Putin wants to "regain Finland", and speaking from his official residence in Helsinki Mr Niinisto said his country would be "very decisive" in response.[/B][/B]
[B][B]In recent weeks "provocative" Russian jets have been intercepted in operations involving RAF Typhoons, Finnish Hornets, Swedish surveillance planes as well as US and Canadian jets off Alaska.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Mr Niinisto told the Guardian the combination of Putin's anti-Nato rhetoric and his air force's behaviour represented "a situation that is not promising". "I have said we are almost at the gates of a new kind of cold war," he said, which had the potential to involve the entire of Europe.

[/B][/B]
The Finnish president's comments came before a conference in Helsinki that will involve various northern European leaders, including David Cameron.
And he spoke after the MoD confirmed British jets had intercepted a Russian Tupolev Tu-95 bomber that was "approaching UK airspace" for the second time in three days.


Finland's president has reportedly warned that Europe is on the brink of "a new kind of cold war" in the wake of apparent military aggression from Russia.

[B][B]The Finnish president's comments came before a conference in Helsinki that will involve various northern European leaders, including David Cameron.[/B][/B]
[B][B]And he spoke after the MoD confirmed British jets had intercepted a Russian Tupolev Tu-95 bomber that was "approaching UK airspace" for the second time in three days.[/B][/B]
[B][B]It was intercepted by fighter jets from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland and "escorted" out of British-monitored airspace on Friday.

A spokesperson from the RAF said: "Following a similar incident on Wednesday 29 October, the RAF Typhoon pilots visually identified the Russian aircraft and escorted them through the UK flight information region."
That and other recent events led Nato to warn of an "unusual level" of Russian military activity in European airspace.[/B][/B]

[Magda Hassan]

:oldier:: Is any one taking this shit seriously. Except those who will benefit from attacking Russia?

[David Guyatt]

What worries me is that it's laying the groundwork for a war by getting the public mind attuned to the evil red empire all over again. This, for me, is to generate/protect defence spending following the withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq and to give the Pentagon a new mission. The cold war lasted almost 50 years with massive defence spending. Add to this noxious mix the Russian switch to a new global currency - BRICS that shifts the emphasis away from the dollar - and that must really worry the US in the longer term.