Hm, a flight of eight Tupolev-95 Russian long range bombers buzzed the North Atlantic,
oh, and Syria claims Israeli air force bombed their desert?
Zipped down the Iceland-Faroe gap, RAF and Norwegian Air Force scrambled to meet them.
Grauniad version here
US comment was that they didn't worry about "mothballed relics", transliterating from the Icelandic story on the incident.
These used to be regular incidents - training and probing radar and readiness.
But they were suspended for fifteen years, until this summer, now they have Tu's nosing about both in the Atlantic and Pacific.
In a totally unrelated incident, Syria claims it fired on Israeli aircraft which crossed into Syrian airspace and dropped "ammunition" over desert areas.
Israelis say "no air strike" was carried out.
Hm - buzzing Syrian defences and dropping flares?
A buzz to piss off the Syrians and a "not quite empty" auxillary fuel tank dropped to evade anti-aircraft fire?
Or air dropping supplies to special forces???
Or, the Israeli plane(s) came in from the Med, not over the Golan - practise bombing run through "live" air defences - in case they need to do a squadron size attack on a defended target, coming in from the sea?
WTF is going on?
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Are the 3000 Uranium centrifuges now in operation in Iran a clue?
If not, I give up.
> Or air dropping supplies to special forces???
Or the whole story just made up?
Bears are only relics in the same way the B-52 is (first flight 1957 or thereabouts); the Tu142 Bear H cruise missile ship is well up to date, as is the Tu95 Bear D sea patrol/asw job. They kept building new airframes up to the 80s.
If you are feeling insufficiently frightened, you might want to read the following piece at Slate. It talks about the current nuclear posture, the problems with the US and Russian nuclear command and control and some speculations on the bunker busters that certain folks in everyone's favorite five sided building are interested in.
That said, the Typhoon is a pretty aircraft.
well, sounds like the Isreal-Syria kerfuffle was real
the Israelis were interdicting Iranian arms shipment, possibly with special force targeting
and they got test the US countermeasures to the latest Russian AA system
Syria is pissed, both countries are semi-mobilised, and Hamas managed to inflict serious casualties on the Israeli Army all in a few days