- WASHINGTON (AFP) - US and
Canadian fighter aircraft moved to forward bases Thursday to counter expected
probes of North American air defenses by Russian strategic bombers that
have deployed recently to bases in eastern Siberia, US and Canadian military
officials said.
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- Five Russian TU-95 Bear bombers have been detected at
two Siberian bases in apparent preparation for missions to probe US air
defenses around Alaska, the Pentagon said Thursday.
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- "We would anticipate that in the next few days they
might fly one or several of these planes up through the Bering Straits
and close to Alaska," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said.
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- US F-15 Eagles and Canadian CF-18 Hornets were deployed
to forward operating locations in Alaska and Canada to counter the Russian
move, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command
at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado told AFP.
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- Also being moved up were AWACS radar surveillance aircraft
and air refueling tankers, said Major Jamie Robertson, the NORAD spokesman.
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- "The fighters are in place, and some of the tankers
and air surveillance aircraft are moving up," said Robertson, a Canadian.
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- He said it was the first time in over a year that US
and Canadian fighters have moved to forward locations in response to Russian
moves.
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- "In terms of having to deploy in response to long
range Russian aviation activity, that something that's fairly rare these
days," he said.
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- "I think '93 was the last time we had an intercept
of a Russian aircraft approaching North America. But it was fairly common
during the Cold War," he said.
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- The US and Canadian response to the Bears comes in the
wake of Russian boasts earlier this month that its warplanes buzzed the
aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan on October 17 and November
9.
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- The Russian SU-24 reconnaissance planes and SU-27 interceptors
flew close enough to the USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan to take photographs
of the carrier,
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- Russian air force chief General Anatoly Kornukov told
the Interfax news agency that the aircraft's approach came as "an
absolute surprise" to the Kitty Hawk, which didn't raise their fighters
into the air until the second flight.
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- Bacon said there "may have been a slight delay"
in the scrambling of interceptors in the first incident.
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- The Kitty Hawk was refueling at the time and not going
fast enough to launch its planes, he said. "So they had to wait in
order for the carrier to accelerate before they could launch the planes.
The second time the planes were launched at the appropriate time,"
he said.
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- But he said the approach of the Russian planes was detected
by radar well in advance in both cases, and that they were followed by
US fighters.
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- "In neither case did the Navy feel that its operations
had been compromised in any way. In neither case did it feel that any protest
was warranted, and, therefore, no protest was made to the Russians,"
Bacon said.
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- Russian bombers have probed US or NATO air defenses at
least three times over the past year, most recently in March when they
approached Alaskan air space only to turn away before reaching a 200 mile-buffer
zone around North America, officials said.
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- "The last actual time we deployed fighters was in
September '99 when there was a Russian Bear bomber that approached the
US North America Air Defense Identification Zone," said Robertson.
"Once we sent fighters up, the aircraft turned back."
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- In June, 1999, US fighters at Keflavik Air Base in Iceland
scrambled to turn away two Bears.
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- That incident attracted attention because it came at
a time of tension with Russia over the NATO air war in Kosovo, and the
eastward expansion of the Atlantic alliance.
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- "We regard the Cold War as being over," Bacon
said. "And although we clearly monitor ships and airplanes, as I think
my presentation proves -- we've monitored the movement of these Bears --
we keep an eye on what the Russians are up to. But we are well-trained
and we're ready to deal with these episodes."
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