Russian Planes Overfly US Carrier

Is Russia trying to start something???
Taking pictures of our carriers!!!!

There is a difference than missles in another country and flying directly over an aircraft carrier with bombers at 500 feet! That is an “in your face” move if ever there was one.
They are trying to start something.
I hope that the escorting F 18′s gave the Russian bombers a missle lock, to send a message.

Kate
Don’t be so trusting, that is too close for comfort. Haven’t we learn anything in the past eight years.
mstee

It is evident that the U.S. is getting weaker, dumber and so “delicate” not to step on anyone’s toes, that one can surmise our decline is inevitable; in other words, the handwriting is on the wall for the long-term…and I am not even talking about the economy, or all the scandals related to it. You don’t have to be Einstein to figure this one out…

Oh give it a rest, Oliver. Our President has a lot of work to do to repair the damage left over by Bush. We need to repair our friendships and reputation in the world. We don’t do that by trying to bully the nations of the world.
We have the Monroe Doctrine and the Russians are trying to redeem their honor with their own version of a Monroe Doctrine.
Who the hell do some of you think we are? The British Royal Navy, in service of Her Majesty? Yes, it was an in-your-face move and we responded how a true superpower should….with a measured but calculated response.
Stop rattling the sabers and work to build some peace. Our world surely needs it now!

Thanks Drew for putting it so well, I agree with you and the tension in the area is mounting, so of course Russia put in their appearance.
Oliver- do you really think we should start a war over the kids flexing a little, and don’t you think our show of force is our flexing?

Relax; this is nothing new. Low-altitude “surprise” overflights of U.S. Navy ships and sometimes U.S. territory by the Russian and/or Soviet military were a fairly common occurrence back in Cold War days, including during the administration of Ronald Reagan, when the superpowers were engaged in a perpetual game of cat-and-mouse and the world was no more than the push of a button away from nuclear annihilation. Routine overflights of Soviet territory by American U-2 spy planes became the practice as far back as the 1950s. Later, the SR-71 spy plane took over the role. Navy ships and submarines were often involved in these games. To U.S. military commanders, all of this is “old hat.”
The recent “incidents” in the Sea of Japan thus merely repeat a familiar pattern, whereby Soviet long-range bombers (their most intimidating manned weapons) would suddenly appear out of the clouds in mid-ocean over a nuclear-armed U.S. aircraft carrier battle group (the prime symbol of the outreach of U.S. power) just to show that the carriers had nowhere to hide and that the Kremlin could do it. These incidents sometimes made the news, when Defense Department spokespersons would reassure the public that the U.S. aircraft carriers were well-defended and never in any danger.
Today’s re-plays of this worn-out game (paralleled by the recent attempted penetrations by Russian Bear bombers of well-defended Canadian air space) have, of course, a different interpretation. The most likely one is that the Kremlin, under the autocratic rulership of overinflated ego (“Me Tarzan”)Vladimir Putin and stung by its historic decline from superpower status, is finally losing it. Or perhaps it’s just a case of the overworked Putin privately losing his mind. That’s assuming he ever had one. If U.S. President Barack Obama bothered to communicate anything in response to the Russian leader, the message was probably along the lines of, “WHAT — are you mad?”

70 nautical miles? Тоо late. As we say in Russia: “Сonventional enemy conditionally destroyed”.
P.S. Sorry for my english. Don’t know the official terminology of NATO.

Relax…those extremists out in the desert or in caves somewhere are no threat to the US. (message board comment from early 1992)

International waters, it’s not sovereign air space, it’s international waters. In international waters you can fly, or sail, or motor anywhere you want. No one has authority in those waters (or international airspace for that matter), that’s why it’s called international. We also have the right to be able to traverse other countries national waters as long as it’s on a passage to somewhere else. Otherwise countries like Iran could simply close off the straights off their waters to our battle groups because our fleet needs to travel within sight from their borders. If you want countries to start exercising their just “rights” by forbidding an unfriendly military from coming close to them, our entire navy will be bottled up in Norfolk within a month.

As a former carrier sailor, I saw many Bear/Badger bombers near our carriers, and when we sent F-4s up, one of them usually positions itself under the bomb bay doors while the other flies on the bomber’s wing tip. (We do it better than China did though when they sent pilot Wong Wei up to shadow our P-3 sub chaser…)

Our advesaries throughout the world are testing out our new leadership to probe the bottomless depths of his naievete. Its time for America to wake up and protect borders, language, and culture and cut the utopian idealism.

To: D. | Mar 20, 2009 11:11:36 AM
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The answer to your question is that the Russian aircraft WERE intercepted in both cases (as is standard practice by the U.S. Navy) by F/A-18 fighter jets scrambled from the U.S. carrier, which escorted the intruders from then on, until they were out of the area. And in fact, the F/A-18s could easily have shot the Russian bombers out of the sky. The intercept happened about 70 miles away from the carrier, which means the the intruders were detected and tracked over a much greater distance than that, probably many hundreds of miles. The carrier and its support ships have radars that continually scan the horizon for potential threats, as well as terminal defenses that are capable of detecting, tracking, and shooting down missiles launched from any potentially hostile aircraft that intrude into its defensive zone, which covers tens of thousands of square miles of surrounding ocean. Moreover, it is routine practice for U.S. Navy carriers to launch and maintain in the air at all times AWACS-style surveillance aircraft such as the Hawkeye whose airborne radars can detect emergent threats long before they are within offensive reach. U.S. military surveillance satellites, whose full capabilities are classified, are capable of extending the bubble of protection around U.S. forces to a much larger area yet.
Unless they were either crazy or stupid, the Russian operatives in this incident knew that they were up against a force of vastly greater reach and technological sophistication than theirs, and that in a real conflict they would stand absolutely no chance of prevailing. The Russian Tu-95 “Bear” bomber is a slow, antiquated 1950s-era weapon that, while doubtless retrofitted with more modern equipment, is no match for anything in the current U.S. inventory. U.S. strategic and tactical forces are designed to prevail against threats far more formidable than the lumbering Tu-95 “Bear.”
Thus, in a real-war scenario, the “Bears” would have gotten nowhere close to the U.S. ships, not within one hundred times the fireball-radius of a 50-megaton nuclear weapon. The recent string of incidents involving Russian planes and U.S. ships (as well as NATO and Canadian air forces which have recently intercepted these “Bears” straying into the wrong territory) testifies to merely to the foolhardiness and antiquated thinking of the current Russian leadership.
The only thing possibly more foolish than the Kremlin thinkers, who seem increasingly out of touch with Reality, is the thinking of some Western commentators today who see in these incidents some kind of intended “test” or challenge of the current U.S. leadership. But every U.S. leader since Truman has been similarly “tested” by the Kremlin, with exactly the same result — nothing gained, and usually something lost (as when JFK kicked their nuclear forces out of Cuba). It is no different this time, except that the Kremlin is making itself look stupider and stupider.
While it wouldn’t be true to say that the Russian Bear is toothless, its recent actions are largely bluster and show, intended to frighten the ignorant, boost Vladimir Putin’s ego by making him feel important, provide a shot in the arm to the Kremlin’s sagging prestige, and (no doubt) give advantage to the Russians in various ongoing economic, trade, and financial manipulations with its partners. This is Russia on steroids. By playing heavily in the news, Russia’s actions provide a diversion and serve to complicate the international situation, thus giving U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton extra headaches and making the pursuit of sensible foreign policy by responsible governments more difficult. The interesting thing about the Kremlin’s current war games is how many people see them as a “test” of Barack Obama — or, worse, as the exploitation of some presumed weakness of America’s new President — when the very same games, played under the last year of the previous administration, were not seen as a test of George W. Bush. If I were Vladimir Putin, I’d be very careful about offending Barack Obama, who is probably the toughest, smartest, best informed, and most capable U.S. President ever to occupy the office.

The Russians know that obama sees America as the Problem. obama has been a friend to to America’s enemies and has surrounded himself with such all his life… no enemies on the left for the magic negro.
This is the time for the America’s enemies to flex their muscles because they know they have an allie in the White House.
Before anyone objects, how do you explain obama’s awful treatment of our British Allies and his sucking up to Iran?

Overflights of vessels, particularly during excercises, are absolutely routine practice. US military aircraft in some instances not only overfly but also buzz Russian vessels at low altitude. Besides that, it is part of the game to make one’s presence known.

How could the russians have been intercepted and escorted away if they overflew the Stennis?

merica has no business parking 3 ships off NK shores to begin with. They were there to send a message to North Korea and Russia is sending a message back. In this case the word “Intercepted” is the wrong word, if the ship was buzzed by Russian aircraft then the correct statement would be… “We ran after them”. Bottom line, if Russian wants to scrap, America is powerless to stop it right now.