Tom Clancy’s back in business

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.

3 thoughts on “Tom Clancy’s back in business”

  2. Leo L. Walker, M.D., Sc.D.

    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.

  3. Brad Warthen

    And while we’re talking "apocalyptic," here’s another interesting little report that was just brought to my attention:

    (CNN) — Israeli aircraft carried out an airstrike inside Syria last week, possibly targeting weapons that were destined for Hezbollah militants, according to sources in the region and in the United States.

    Syria reported that its aircraft fired on Israeli "enemy aircraft" that flew into northern Syria early Thursday. The Israel Defense Forces had no comment on the report, and have refused to comment further on the new revelations.

    But the sources told CNN the military operation, which happened Wednesday into Thursday, may have also involved Israeli ground forces who directed the airstrike which "left a big hole in the desert" in Syria.

    The strike may have targeted Hezbollah weapons coming into Syria <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/syria> or transiting through the country from Iran — a pattern over the past three or four years which has occurred without any retaliation or action taken against it — the sources said.

    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.

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