We hear more and more about the return of the bad old days in Putin’s Russia. And now we have a Cold War scenario that reads like a passage from the first few hundred pages of Red Storm Rising. It came this morning via e-mail from International Media Intelligence Analysis, an alert service of Réalité EU. It’s based originally on a Reuters story:
The RAF scrambled four Tornado jets on Thursday to intercept eight Russian long-range bombers, the Ministry of Defence said. The ministry said the Russian aircraft had not entered British airspace. "In the early hours of this morning four RAF Tornado F3 aircraft from RAF Leeming and RAF Waddington were launched to intercept eight Russian "bear" aircraft which had not entered UK airspace," it said in a statement. Russia’s defence ministry published a statement earlier on Thursday which said 14 Russian strategic bombers had started long-range routine patrol operations on Wednesday evening over the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Arctic. The statement said six planes had already returned to base and that the other eight were still in the air. "The planes flew only over neutral water and did not approach the airspace of a foreign state," the statement said. "Practically all the planes were accompanied by fighters from NATO countries." Sky News said the Russian aircraft were heading towards British airspace and did a U-turn when approached by the British fighters. It is at least the second time in recent months that Britain has scrambled jets to intercept Russian bombers.
And so, having collected intel on Britain’s air defense capabilities, they turned toward home. And we are left to wonder why there are Bears, strategic bombers, still conducting — or is it, "once again conducting"? — anything that could be characterized as "long-range routine patrol operations." That’s pure Cold-War, finger-on-the-Doomsday-trigger stuff. And what sort of armament were they carrying?
And of course, Mr. Putin wants us thinking things like that.
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Perhaps this new Clancy novel could start with “I looked into his eyes and saw his soul…”
And high time it is for Clancy to have something to write about with apocalyptic overtones, rather than the movie screens in a nuclear aircraft carrier, or, maybe, a foray into fiction like whupping up on some drug lords. If we are going to have the Soviet Union back, then at loeast we should have the pleasure of fiction about it, and Tom Clancy was the best for a politically naive person like me who loves the scientific details of physics, electronics, maybe even nukular hand grenades, if they would just get busy and invent them.
And while we’re talking "apocalyptic," here’s another interesting little report that was just brought to my attention:
Here’s my best-guess on what really happened — there was this time-warp, see, and some planes out of the Israel of a generation ago (motto: "Kick Ass Now; Answer Questions Later") flew through it, carried out this mission, and flew back.
Well, it makes sense to me.