“North American Aerospace Protection Command F-22 fighter aircraft, supported by KC-135 air refuelers, intercepted three teams of two Tu-142 Russian maritime patrol plane that entered the Alaskan Air Protection Identification Zone late last night,” the command stated in a statement on Friday.
Whilst the Russian plane arrived in just 50 nautical miles of the Alaskan coast, they remained in international airspace.
On Thursday, US Northern Command explained it was monitoring a Russian submarine that had surfaced in intercontinental waters off the coast of Alaska.
A US official advised CNN that is extremely strange for a Russian submarine to surface in that spot.
Russia once in a while flies army aircraft into the Alaskan Air Protection Identification Zone, which extends past US and Canadian airspace, and these incursions are often intercepted by US or Canadian jets running as portion of NORAD.
On the other hand, US army officials say there has been an boost in these Russian flights in modern months.
“This yr, we’ve carried out extra than a dozen intercepts, the most in modern many years. The significance of our ongoing efforts to project air defense operations in and through the north has hardly ever been a lot more evident,” Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of NORAD, stated in a assertion Friday.
The US carried out its possess display of power on Friday, flying four B-52 bombers around all 30 members of NATO.
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