Article

2007-09-07 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

RAF intercepts eight Russian bombers as Putin provokes West

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Posted by anonymous5089 2007-09-07 01:15|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top

#1 TOPIX NEWS/WORLDNEWS > HINDUSTAN TIMES > CONTAINING RUSSIA:BACK TO THE FUTURE article, except that this time CONTAINMENT andor ignoring Russia may actually lead to de facto MIL CONFRONTATION WID WEST. Read - Russ is MilPol uppity/nervous about competition from USA, CHina, etal.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2007-09-07 01:39|| 2007-09-07 01:39|| Front Page Top

#2 Jam their radios and splash them. When the Russkis demand answers, just tell them there must have been an accident.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2007-09-07 08:35|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2007-09-07 08:35|| Front Page Top

#3 you would think that the russkies would think twice about arming Muslim natioms after chechnya and getting their ass handed too them in afghanistan

Posted by here now gone tomorrow 2007-09-07 09:22|| 2007-09-07 09:22|| Front Page Top

#4 I would start putting SAMs on submarines. Jam the ruskie bombers then splash them from the subs. Perfect deniability since there were no traceable ships/planes in the area.

Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader 2007-09-07 09:44|| 2007-09-07 09:44|| Front Page Top

#5 virtually all of our strategic planes are being shadowed by Nato fighters.

So it's good practice.
Plus those Bears are getting pretty old. If they keep this tempo up, I'm forseeing phrases like "metal fatigue", "structural failure" and "no survivors" in the near future. Probably get some decent pictures too...

Posted by tu3031 2007-09-07 09:49|| 2007-09-07 09:49|| Front Page Top

#6 The exercise is expensive for the RAF.

I'd say it is a bargain; real time training for their pilots and decision makers.

Plus, what would be the cost of *not* deploying the Tornados?

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2007-09-07 10:33|| 2007-09-07 10:33|| Front Page Top

#7 More like his inner Andropov.

Posted by mojo">mojo 2007-09-07 10:45|| 2007-09-07 10:45|| Front Page Top

#8 The real question here is what are the Russians try to accomplish? What message are they sending? And what will their next step be? If one or more of those Bears, for whatever reason splashes, what then? Strange, very strange indeed. But they are .... Russians after all.

Posted by Besoeker 2007-09-07 12:26|| 2007-09-07 12:26|| Front Page Top

#9 Article: It costs more than £40,000 an hour to fly a Tornado F3 and yesterdays operation will have cost at least £160,000.

That's $80,000, which can't be right. Commercial 737 airplanes carrying a hundred people get about $30,000 of revenues each for city-to-city shuttle flights. And commercial jets, being bigger, should be more expensive to maintain. They must be throwing everything and the kitchen sink into that cost figure.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-09-07 13:31|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-09-07 13:31|| Front Page Top

#10 The exercise is expensive for the RAF. It costs more than £40,000 an hour to fly a Tornado F3 and yesterdays operation will have cost at least £160,000. Underlining the scale of the operation, the RAF also sent up an airborne early warning aircraft (Awacs) and a VC10 tanker so that the Tornados could be refuelled.

Time to make this excersize much more expensive for the Russians. Splash a few of their Bears and they won't come back for more.

That's $80,000, which can't be right.

Correct:

160,000.00 GBP = 324,556.68 USD
1 GBP = 2.02848 USD 1 USD = 0.492980 GBP

Over one quarter of a million dollars just to scramble some jets. Putin needs this rammed up his tailpipe. I'm hoping some of the weapons he sells to Malaysia turn up in an atrocity on Russian soil. He sure as hell didn't learn anything from Beslan.

More like his inner Andropov.

Turn on, tune in, Andropov.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-09-07 16:14|| 2007-09-07 16:14|| Front Page Top

#11 Have the RAF pilots turn on their fire control radars and lock on the Bears. Go through whatever maneuvers they do right before firing. If nothing else, it will raise the pucker factor for the Russkis.

Posted by Rambler">Rambler 2007-09-07 16:31|| 2007-09-07 16:31|| Front Page Top

#12 It's the way the British do their accounting. Take the total Tornado program costs and divide by the expected flight hours and you get these crazy numbers. In contrast the US takes into account the extra fuel and maintenance required vs the bird sitting on the tarmac, about $3-5000/hour.

Same when buying equipment. The Brits use total lifetime program cost, the US the cost to procure the airframe. The British accountants claim each WAH-64 costs £60 mil ($125 mill) while the US Army was buying AH-64Ds at a flyaway cost of $15-20 mill.

Posted by ed 2007-09-07 17:25|| 2007-09-07 17:25|| Front Page Top

#13 And why exactly all these Poles, Lithuanians and Slovaks, Bosnians coming to UK? How can they all be vetted? Mossies sleepers not the only sleepers, but with politicians as fast asleep as these guys, there will be nothing left to govern soon, forget the Russians.

Posted by rhodesiafever 2007-09-07 18:04|| 2007-09-07 18:04|| Front Page Top

#14 Item one: There's a Russian election coming up. Nobody's going to flank Putin's faction from the right.

Item two: Russian arms sales. It's easier to sell armaments if your military is on the perceived "offensive". A reputation for grounding your aircraft because you can't afford the maintenance is not a successful marketing tactic.

Posted by mrp 2007-09-07 18:45|| 2007-09-07 18:45|| Front Page Top

#15 The real question here is what are the Russians try to accomplish? What message are they sending?

Another question is who is the intended audience. At least some of this is intended to raise the morale of Russians.

But Putin is KGB / GRB and never does anything for just one purpose if he can help it.

Posted by lotp 2007-09-07 18:59|| 2007-09-07 18:59|| Front Page Top

#16 And why exactly all these Poles, Lithuanians and Slovaks, Bosnians coming to UK?

Chatted with a contractor working on my house today. Emigrated from the Ukraine 16 yrs ago. He talked about how many families in the Ukraine have only 1 child because the economy was wrecked by the soviets and hasn't recovered yet .... lots of fathers are working in Poland, Germany, Britain and sending home whatever money they can.

Posted by lotp 2007-09-07 19:03|| 2007-09-07 19:03|| Front Page Top

#17 Is the Tornado F3 superior in design to the F-15?

Posted by mrp 2007-09-07 19:29|| 2007-09-07 19:29|| Front Page Top

#18 No. Think of it as a mini F-111. It is an attack plane (as the Germans use it) but the Brits shoehorned into the interceptor role, with predictable results. The British were offered the F-15 but decided to go with the "European" Tornado, much as they did again with Eurofighter Typhoon even though rumor has it the Brits were offered the F-22.

Posted by ed 2007-09-07 20:07|| 2007-09-07 20:07|| Front Page Top

#19 Thanks, ed. There's a similar thread over at Samizdata, and one of the commenters sketched out some broad comparisons between the F-15, F3, Typhoon, and the Raptor.

Posted by mrp 2007-09-07 20:19|| 2007-09-07 20:19|| Front Page Top

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