Posted on 08/02/2014 10:42:10 AM PDT by McGruff
A U.S. Air Force spy plane evaded an encounter with the Russian military in recent days by flying into nearby Swedish airspace without that country's permission, a U.S. military official told CNN.
The RC-135 Rivet Joint plane was flying in international airspace, conducting an electronic eavesdropping mission on the Russian military, when the Russians took the unusual action of beginning to track it with one of its land-based radar.
The Russians then sent at least one fighter jet into the sky to intercept the American aircraft, the U.S. official said Saturday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
And Mexico!
I assumed this was standard practice: we fly spy planes in international airspace near other countries and the ones that are able to track the planes with radar do so.
Seems if we’re that nervous about our planes being tracked by radar while in international airspace, we should either send planes that cannot be tracked or use satellites to do the job.
Sounds like they were tracking it with a fire control radar rather than a surveillance radar. That is considered a hostile act. The Soviets spy on us, we spy on them, for the most part both parties are well behaved. Illuminating an aircraft in international air space with a fire control radar is the kind of shit that gets people killed.
“This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.” — Hunt for Red October
Keep this up and we'll have missiles in New York City.
The real story here is the willful violation of Sweden’s neutrality. If Sweden permits repeated violation of its declared neutrality, its neutrality will be voided. Stockholm vigorously guards its neutral status.
I vote for missiles in Washington, DC. Can we arrange that, please?
They don’t want another Gary Powers incident.
I’m very surprised we even had a Rivet Joint up snooping.
We’ve been doing this for over 50 years. Nothing new. They gather information about the Russians’ targeting radars with each probe.
Ole Fred. He was just an actor. But then again so was Ronald Reagan.
Not “just” an actor. Perhaps you should take a look at his CV.
You missed my point but I’m not surprised.
Could someone explain why this is unusual?
Well, the airliner bombing had its effect. because we are too pu$$y to assert ourselves, we abuse our allies’ trust... Hiding behind Sweden.
Our. Obama military is a complete efn disgrace of cowards.
If this was just normal long range tracking/search radar, not a big deal.
If it was fire control radar from a SAM site locking him up, that is the precursor for being set to fire a missile, depending on the SAM system.
If nothing else, he'd at least be able to improvise when his teleprompter died instead of babbling like an uneducated punk on gorilla biscuits the way His Majesty King Barry does.
Regards
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