Norwegian, UK jets scramble to monitor 8 Russian bombers
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Norwegian and British fighters scrambled twice Thursday to monitor eight Russian bombers that neared the Nordic country's territory in the latest show of air power by the Kremlin, defense officials said.

Lt. Col. John Inge Oeglaend, of the Norwegian Joint Headquarters, said the Tupolev-95 strategic bombers, also called Tu-95MC or Bears, neared but did not enter Norwegian air space in the far north.



British defense officials said four Royal Air Force fighters also scrambled to monitor the flight, which did not enter British territory.

"They followed a normal route in international air space," Oeglaend said by telephone from the western Norway port of Stavanger. He said they flew near Norway's northern tip over the Barents Sea, then over the North Atlantic and back.

Oeglaend said two Norwegian F-16 fighters were sent up both times that the Russian aircraft approached Norway, in keeping with normal practice.

Norway, a member of the NATO alliance, and Russia share land and ocean borders in the Arctic, including the vast Barents Sea.

According to Oeglaend, this is the third time Norwegian fighters have scrambled since mid-July to monitor a rising number of Russian military air exercises.

A British Defense Ministry spokesman, speaking on traditional condition of anonymity, said, "I can confirm that in the early hours of this morning four F3s launched from RAF Leeming and RAF Waddington to intercept eight Russian Bears, which had not entered UK airspace."

Russian news agencies quoted air force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying Thursday that Russian long-range bombers had begun patrols of distant areas of the globe late Wednesday, in accordance with plans announced by President Vladimir Putin for a resumption of the flights.

"In accordance with the confirmed plan, 14 Tu-95MC strategic bombers on Wednesday evening began regular air patrols over the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans involving in-flight refueling," ITAR-Tass and Interfax quoted Drobyshevsky as saying.

He said the flights were not violating international regulations and that the planes "are flying over neutral waters, not approaching close to the air borders of foreign countries," according to ITAR-Tass.

Drobyshevsky said that "practically all (the bombers involved) are being shadowed by NATO jets," the reports said.

In mid-August, Norwegian fighters scrambled to monitor a flight of 11 Russian bombers exercising off western Norway in the biggest show of Russian air power over the Norwegian Sea since the early 1990s.


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Russian strategic bombers to begin patrols Sep. 6 - Air Force
14:27 | 05/ 09/ 2007



MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russian long-range Tu-95MS Bear-H strategic bombers will begin patrolling the remote areas on September 6, Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky, an Air Force spokesman, said Wednesday.

Moscow announced in mid-August that strategic patrol flights had been resumed and would continue on a permanent basis, with patrol areas including commercial shipping and economic production zones.

President Vladimir Putin announced the resumption of patrol flights August 17, and said that although the country halted long-distance strategic patrol flights to remote regions in 1992, other nations continued the practice, creating certain problems for Russian national security.

Washington played down the significance of Russian strategic bomber flights.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: "That's a decision for them to take... If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision."

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070905/76774553.html