On July 16, the Russian command had to lift the duty fighters into the sky twice. Their crews tracked the actions of foreign aircraft first over the Bering Sea, and then over the Pacific Ocean near the coast of Kamchatka.
In both cases, these were US military aircraft. Judging by their purpose, they did not happen to be near the Russian borders by chance. This very purpose was mentioned in the messages of the National Center for Defense Management of the Russian Federation. According to the data available there, two pairs of MiG-31 and Su-35 fighters escorted B-52N strategic bombers of the US Air Force Global Strikes Command over the Bering Sea.
And near Kamchatka, a MiG-31 interceptor on duty in the Eastern Military District found a US Navy P-8A Poseidon base patrol aircraft. He was walking along the south-eastern coast of the peninsula, but he did not get close to it. Given that this plane is literally stuffed with intelligence equipment, it is not difficult to assume that its crew was trying to take aerial photographs and scan frequencies in the Kamchatka region. And after the appearance of our MiG-31 in the sky, the Americans preferred to get out.
The editor-in-chief of the magazine "Arsenal of the Fatherland" Viktor Murakhovsky explained why the planes of the US basic patrol aviation have recently been increasingly noticed near the borders of Russia. It is possible that they are trying to determine the patrol areas of our submarines and the routes of warships. For example, the same Poseidon has towed radio beacons on board, which it drops in various areas of the World's oceans and removes the necessary information with their help. "I do not know for sure whether they use active radio beacons during flights near our borders, but this is not excluded," the expert suggested.
Yuri Gavrilov
