As such, what passes for dangerous and provocative today was ho-hum to recon crews of my generation (although we weren’t shot at like the early fliers from 1950-1960).” Recent movies taken by a PRC aircraft that was intercepted by a JASDF F-15CJ suggests that the Eagle was very close-until the camera zooms out and shows the Eagle was 70-100 feet away from the wingtip….įinally, although the number of Russian reactions to Western recon flights has been increasing recently, for 15-20 years (certainly from 1992 through 2010) there were almost no reactions on a regular basis. The U-Boat crew took video of the intercept, which has not been released but shows the precise extent of how close the FLANKER really was. The challenge with the larger airplanes like the Su-27 and MiG-31 is the sheer size of the interceptor as it moves in front of any portion of the intercepted plane.Īt least the Su-27 pilot has excellent all-around visibility to see where the back-end of his own airplane is as he maneuvers adjacent to the RC-135. Smaller airplanes like MiG-21s made it easy. “Prior to the end of the Cold War interceptors from a variety of nations managed to get into tight formation with RC-135s and EP-3s. However, as a former RC-135 aircraft commander who flew the S, U, V, W, and X models, told us a couple of years ago: Navy P-8 Poseidon’s path over the Black Sea during an intercept mission, causing the American maritime patrol aircraft to endure violent turbulence, on Nov. The last episode involved a Russian Su-30 that crossed within 50 feet of a U.S. spyplanes flying in international airspace.īarrel rolls, aggressive turns that disturbed the controllability of the “zombie” (intercepted aircraft in fighter pilot’s jargon), inverted flight: if you use the search function on this site you can read of several such incidents that made the news on media all around the world. In the last few years, we have often reported about “unsafe and unprofessional” intercepts conducted across the world by Russian (and Chinese) fighter jets scrambled to identify and escort U.S. “Because I was….inverted!”: Top Gun stunt performed near a Russian strategic bomber.
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