TU-160
Russian military planes flew undetected through the U.S. zone of the Arctic Ocean to Canada during recent military exercises, a senior Air Force commander said Saturday.
The commander of the country’s long-range strategic bombers, Lieutenant General Igor Khvorov, said the U.S. Air Force is now investigating why its military was unable to detect the Russian bombers.
“They were unable to detect the planes either with radars or visually,” he said.
Khorov said that during the military exercises in April, Tu-160 Blackjack bombers and Tu-95 Bears had successfully carried out four missile launches. Bombing exercises were held using Tu-22 Blinders.
Homeland Insecurity wins again! At posting time, I couldn’t find any mention of this in the US press.
I wonder if anyone will ask Rummie about it at his next [bullshit-oops!] press conference?
Homeland Insecurity wins again! At posting time, I couldn’t find any mention of this in the US press.
I wonder if anyone will ask Rummie about it at his next [bullshit-oops!] press conference?
You know, if you’re going to be a kook, at least get your facts somewhat straight.
Homeland Security has nothing to do with this. It’s all about Defense.
From there, how would this be Rumsfeld’s problem? Do you expect him to work on the radar stations in Alaska, too? He’s too busy running circles around his critics to do that!
NORAD can detect Santa Claus, but they can’t detect Russian fighters? LOL
I wonder how far a hijacked airliner from Russia would get into American/Canadian airspace…
I could give a Rats*ss who’s job it is. I want to know why we are searching grandma at the airport but huge fighter plans can fly around where ever they want.
When, and I mean WHEN they strike again, it’s going to be something we didn’t expect just like last time.
> When, and I mean WHEN they strike again,
> it’s going to be something we didn’t expect
> just like last time.
You can’t argue with tautological arguments like that! Infallible! I’ve heard something familiar somewhere….oh yes:
“The Russians have never found anything that we have successfully hidden.”
-Dan Quayle.
You can’t hunt polar bears and camels at the same time. Probably detection and interception of arctic incursions has been scaled back significantly since the end of the cold war. It was costing a fortune then.
A couple of years ago, the Russians mentioned that they were working on stealth techniques that didn’t require special aircraft materials or configurations. The general reaction to it, aside from a yawn, was to claim that the Russians were full of BS. It looks, tenatively, like they might have succeeded.
What I kinda suspect they did was this funny trick that nobody seems to pick up on, frequency interference. Essentially if you have a signal that gets interfered with by another signal, the reflected return is the remainder of the lower frequency subtracted from the higher one. If you make the interfering signal, frequency agile, you can’t adjust your recieving set to compensate for the interference. These days that would probably be done with an embedded processor board, but when the Russians originally came out with frequency agile radars, it was an electromechanical gadget.
Now mind you I can’t prove it, but that’s probably the best explanation that I can come up with for a non-stealth airplane displaying stealth characteristics.
BTW, that frequency interference thing originally was used by this gadget that could simulate an anechoic chamber, that I read about maybe 30 years ago. Seems to me that if you can apply the principle with sound, RF energy shouldn’t be a big problem.
In the meantime, we all get to sit back, relax and watch Rumsfeld waste more money on an irrelevant war and “transformational” technologies that only Rube Goldberg could love.
Smartalix, it’s cute that you don’t have a sense of humor.
Really.
I think you lot have missed the main point.
Yes, it’s embarrassing when an exercise results in some win by an allied nation, as for instance when a US aircraft carrier is ‘sunk’ by a British or Canadian sub.
But you don’t run joint military exercises with your enemies!
So the very fact that Russian aircraft are participating in joint exercises to be able to do this is a major cause for celebration.
As for the porosity or otherwise of US defences, well it’s a big country. Gaps will happen. Even the US can’t afford the amount of equipment required to seal each and every border against every possible threat.
This one lands in the DOD’s Air Force arm.
I think this mosty a result of continually underestimating the Russians. They always seem to be able to get the job done with less tech and less money than us.
Does anyone really take this serious? A Russian Air Force general is quoted in an article on the RUSSIAN INFORMATION AGENCY website, and you all take seriously?
How is this any different than the reams of propaganda Pravda used ot put out?
Did anyone read the article or follow the link?
Shane B. I was just thinking the same thing. The only evidence of this “breach” that I’ve seen is from the Russians (who could basically claim anything they want to since it’d diffcult for the US to prove otherwise).
Ain’t too new, folks. They stopped building TU160’s around 1991.
Is it possible? Of course. Ask someone who flies F16’s. I did. The TU160 was built to outperform the B1-A which we never put into production.
Oh, and Shane, get past the Cold War, dude. Of course, the article appeared in the Russian press, first. They wanted to brag on it a bit. Isn’t that understandable. In Cold War daze, it wouldn’t have even showed up in the Soviet Press. The only folks they needed to impress were US Air Force generals.
The question asked was why haven’t our stellar US journalists picked it up, checked it out, asked questions of the Know-Nothings in Washington?
Oh, I forgot. It’s all a media plot against the White House.
I love how America is responsible for the air security of Canada!
moss is right about the TU-160s, it’s almost an exact duplicate of the B-1A. (by the way the B-1B is just a piece of crap halfA$$ attempt at making the B-1A cheaper.) But the russians while good at reverse engineering aren’t perfect and it performed like crap.(they have never been good a fuel effeciency) I think that the blackjacks range is quite limited, and when i say limited i mean like an intercontinental run would be one way.
And if this is even true you have to let you friends win sometimes or they won’t want to play with you anymore.
The facts are: the Russians issued a press release on 13 April stating that they would fly three sets of bombers. One by Japan and two north along Alaska and the Canadian Arctic archipelago. On 14 April the Russian bombers, in international airspace, approached Alaska, communicated with air traffic control and proceeded to fly as described.
According to NORAD (a bi-national command responsible for the air defence of both Canada and the United States) they deployed US fighters in Alaska and Canadian fighters in the Arctic to shadow the bombers. At no time did the Russian aircraft enter sovereign airspace of either the US or Canada. Just because you can’t see the fighters does not mean they are not there.
The INTERFAX release is a nice piece of disinformation.
Maybe Bose could create a set of radar jamming headphones and sell them to the Russians through Parade magazine.
Interesting way to bring up disinformation John. Here’s the press releases from NORAD 2/3/06 through 4/18/06, most recent: http://www.norad.mil/newsroom/recent.htm
Nothing like your quote there. Norad site search with Google for “TU 160 arctic flight” turns up “did not match any documents”.
Feel like offering up a US military source?
BTW — my earlier Comment was out of date. They’ve started up building TU160’s, again. These were the first of the new builds and were so well received they’ve ordered 2 more. That’s information from a US site.
Another BTW — though Interfax wasn’t the source linked to, they may well have been the 1st of several Russian sources. They are considered reliable enough to partner with Moody, Experian, Reuters, Bloomberg, Radio Liberty and other equally subversive information services. But, then, you already knew that.
This is nothing new. This cat and mouse game has been played for decades. It is just now, after the cold war is over and the USSR has collapsed, that anyone feels free enough to talk about it.
The weird thing is that if the Soviets had managed to find a hole in NORAD defenses, why would they trumpet it to the world instead of keeping it to themselves and put that in their bag of tricks in case it is ever needed for real?
Basically, the Soviets have admitted to the world that they have invaded a sovereign nation’s airspace. If I am not mistaken, this is willful disregard for international law. In the past, it was not spoken of, let alone admitted. If you did, you could find yourself in a court martial.
The last time I ever heard of anyone admitting to overflying a foreign country (outside of wartime) was when Gary Powers was sitting in a Soviet prison and U-2 wreckage was on display in Moscow.
And, if you think this is somehow inexcusable, the stories from the last several decades that our submariners could tell would make your hair stand on end.
Moss wrote “by the way the B-1B is just a piece of crap halfA$$ attempt at making the B-1A cheaper”.
Dude, that is totally false. The B-1B was never meant to be cheaper than the B1-A. In fact, it was much more expensive. The B-1B had stealth features (which reduced its max speed), had increased range, better payload, vastly superior jamming equipment, better countermeasures, terrain following capability, simplified mechanical systems, better ejection systems, added internal and external cruise missile carriage capability, external stores provisions, etc, etc, etc.
By adding more capability, the Air Force could lower their original request from over 300 B-1A’s to just 100 B-1B’s. That does not make the B-1B a cheaper aircraft, just a cheaper fleet price.
And if you talk to the pilots that fly the B-1B’s, they will tell you it is one of the most exhilarating rides on the planet. It performs like a fighter yet was designed to have twice the payload capacity of the B-52 it replaced. It is not “a piece of crap”, as you so gently put it.
However, by comparison to the cost of the 32 operational B-2’s, it was a bargain.
The B-1B is an amazing aircraft. And the Blackjack, although similar in configuration, is far, FAR from being “almost an exact copy” of the B-1A. That is like saying that the F-15 is an exact copy of the Mig-25.
Mark T — your post is interesting; but, who the hell are you quoting at the beginning of your comment? It certainly isn’t me. And it’s not much of a quote of Richard Crisp who referenced my earlier comment.
Completely aside; but, one of those special moments — I shall never forget driving westbound towards El Paso on I-10 at approx. 140 mph during one of those lovely afternoon moments when the radar detector was on the money — shift change time for the THP — no pandas in sight. When I notice something moving low and large out of the corner of my left eye.
It was a B-1B skimming the ground, not too fast, not too slow. Barely 100 feet off the deck. I imagine it was some sort of drill on the way to surprise folks at Fort Bliss. It moved on parallel to the road — and then out of sight. Absolutely gorgeous!
Of course, that was fifteen years ago or so.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/slbm/941.htm
It amazed the US technologists that at the time that Russia fell, that they had worked on silent Submarines, and that we hadnt located a few of them.
Dont think ANYTHING is new.
Even most of the airforce was amazed at looking at the Migs, and HOw they had been made. And they took MANY years to beat, but the MIG still could be placed in locations OUR planes would FREEZE in.
Oops, sorry moss! That was a reply to Richard Crisp (regarding his reply to you in #16). My apologies.
Yep, seeing a B-1 flying nape of the earth at high speed is an amazing sight. I worked on the B-1B back in the mid 80’s and have met several Bone pilots. When these pilots let the autopilot fly the aircaft at near supersonic speeds while just 200 feet off the deck, you know they have supreme confidence in their aircraft. They know what an incredible machine the B-1B truly is. At that speed and altitude, there is nothing on Earth that can catch them.
I once had a B-1B fly directly overhead at about 500 feet and at around 600+ MPH. It is hard to believe that something that big can be that fast and that graceful.
If you were outside of El Paso, you probably saw some of the guys out of Abilene on a training mission. That is the primary Bone training base.
Cheers!
Dr. Strange love, ALL over again..
Mark T, You sound like a propaganda film. Just becasue the pilots like an aircraft doesn’t mean it a wonderful piece of machinery. Talk to the mechanics and avionics techs who maintain it. It is just about impossible to keep operational.
Richard, no aircraft of this sophistication is ever simple to maintain. Given equal manhours and spares, I would make a very large wager that the operational readiness of the B-1 dwarfs that of the B-2 (which is an exponentially more complex aircraft).
Unfortunately, the B-2 is the crown jewel of the Air Force brass and it has received far in excess of its share of funding, manpower, and spares at the expense of the B-1. You get what you pay for.
Gee, I bet that when you see radar jammers advertised on television, you’ve never thought pf the national security implications! There can be no interception without detection, so all we have left is the threat of retribution. That way, if America is ever wiped off the face of the Earth, we can still have the last word.
During the Cold War the arctic circle was defended by a wall of radar installations known as the DEW Line(distant early warning) that was wired to Norad which has an installation in Colorado and Canada. The underground Norad complex in canada is in North Bay, Ontario. In the early nineties the DEW Line was scrapped, which was a joint Can/US venture. Canada does defend her own airspace, albeit with an aging wing of F-18 fighters. These planes were chosen because of their 2 engine design which added a redundancy that could save the pilot in the event of engine failure in the secluded northern wastelands.
We had nothing to fear from Russia…until we got GW for a president…GW is a madman…the rest of the world knows it…..and since we can’t muster the balls to get rid of him and his tyrants, hold them accountable and prosecute…its up to the rest of the world to do it…but we will be caught in the middle…kiss your ass goodbye
Could this be why Cheney is ratcheting up the rhetoric for Cold War II ?
Thanks for helping to reveal the truth about bush & the lies of this war