With a nod to an old Jethro Tull song, while Europe has been scrambling fighters to track Russian Bear bombers, the Russians have been looking back. It made the news a few days ago when Russian media carried video taken from the bombers of the fighters escorting them. It provides a fascinating look at both the fighters, and the massive turboprops with their contra-rotating propellors; the video has the effect of showing them turning in slow motion and makes the blades look curved. http://youtu.be/...
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
The Aviationist has a bit more detail:
Here is an interesting video [see above] filmed from inside a Tu-95 Bear escorted by Royal Air Force Typhoons and French Air Force Mirage 2000s during one of the recent missions of the Russian Air Force strategic bombers in northern Europe.
Even though RAF jets were scrambled on Feb. 18 to intercept two Tu-95MS bombers off the Cornwall coast, the footage was probably filmed on Jan. 29, when two Bears, accompanied by Mig-31 Foxhound long-range interceptors [ see here], were refueled twice by Il-78 Midas aerial refuelers [see here] and were intercepted and escorted by RAF Typhoons, Norwegian F-16s [see here] and French Mirage 2000s at various stages of their trip.
Indeed, the video briefly shows also an armed French Mirage shadowing the Russian Bear.
The video (see above) shows the
Mirage 2000 at about 50 seconds in; the rest of the footage is of
Typhoons. The Typhoon is built by a consortium of European countries, and is a fourth generation multi-role aircraft. Note that both are carrying missiles.
Major Kong had a write up of the Tu-95 Bear not that long ago:
The TU-95 prototype first flew in 1952 and it entered production in 1956. This very closely parallels the development of the B-52. Size wise it's a 4/5 scale B-52 weighing in at 414,000 lbs fully loaded with a wingspan of 164 feet.
Andrei's gamble paid off. The TU-95 was highly successful while its jet-powered competitor (the M-4) didn't have anywhere near the range required. The TU-95 became the mainstay of the Soviet (and Russian) bomber force with over 500 being produced. They were still building these as recently as the early 1990s!
This is one of the fastest propeller driven aircraft ever built, cruising at .73 mach. The absolute speed record for propeller-driven aircraft is still held by its airliner counterpart the TU-114.
To put that in perspective, most jet airliners cruise at .80 mach. The Bear's top speed, depending on which source you believe, is somewhere between .82 and .87 mach.
During the height of the Cold War, the presence of Soviet military aircraft flying through international air space near the air space of potential opponents like the U.S. and NATO was not infrequent; less well known are
the secret missions that were flown over the Soviet Union.
Gary Powers was the best known pilot to be shot down - but
not the only one to be lost on
these kinds of missions.
Recon satellites have largely taken over the role once played by aircraft these days, so what's up with all of the latest flights - and how many incidents of similar ilk have there been? The Independent has a list of incidents involving Russian and NATO aircraft since March of 2014.
The European Leadership Network (ELN) examined 39 incidents of military encounters between Russian planes and boats, and Nato forces and allies, in the last eight months to conclude that the "highly disturbing" violations of national airspace had caused several incidents where military confrontation or the loss of life was narrowly avoided.
Its report listed near-misses including violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea and simulated bombing attacks stretching from the North Sea to the Baltic and Arctic regions and along the US coast.
It might be easy to dismiss some of that as reflexive cold war paranoia about Russia, or threat-porn peddled by the military industrial complex, but there are indications of some serious intent behind the saber rattling.
The BBC has a look at Russian plans for its military in just 90 seconds:
http://youtu.be/...
There's a further report from the BBC on the imperatives behind the Russian increase on military spending.
When Russia last went to war, in Georgia in 2008, it looked like an easy victory. But Russia's generals were deeply concerned at how badly their forces performed in some key areas of modern warfare.
Russia has spent the seven years since then rearming, re-equipping, and retraining, in order to deal with those deficiencies, and to try to close the capability gap with modern Western armies.
Now the results can be seen in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists have gained ground against Ukrainian government troops.
Contemporary Russia under Vladimir Putin is essentially a corrupt kleptocracy with nuclear weapons, kept afloat by its energy reserves; economic sanctions over Ukraine have hurt the Russian economy - but the trouble goes deeper.
Western complacence over Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union had led to a decrease in focus on its capabilities and objectives. Somewhere along the way, Russia's transition to a functioning democracy went off the rails. It may not be the "Evil Empire" of yore, but it's not necessarily a comfortable neighbor or global partner. If it were not for the continuing turmoil across the Middle East and the perpetual war on terror, it would be getting a lot more attention from the West.
From Russia's viewpoint, it has been in an intolerable situation; the former client states of eastern Europe have been moving out of its orbit to reach out to the West. Economic ties, even military ties to NATO, have been driven by the continuing market failures of the Russian economy to match the rest of the world. Simply put, there is little incentive for them to maintain ties to Russia compared with what they can get elsewhere, and historical reasons for them to split away as well. This creates problems for Russia which does not want economic isolation, and definitely does not want potential military threats on its borders.
Flights by Russian aircraft operating in European airspace (and other military exercises) serve several purposes. It sends a message that Russia is not to be ignored as a military power. It's useful for domestic consumption at home, where Russian people have reportedly been encouraged with patriotic fervor for a demonstration of Russian power. (Being a global superpower is addictive) It provides a distraction from domestic problems.
For former Soviet Bloc members it sends a message - there's a potential cost for aligning too closely with the West and showing a lack of deference to Moscow. An analysis of Putin's strategy in keeping Ukraine on the boil is that it keeps it from carrying through on closer ties to the West.
The increased military activity is forcing NATO members to rethink defense spending - it got cut way back after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Peace Dividend . Having to arm up again A) puts strain on budgets already tight from dealing with the Great Recession and the damaging effect of austerity policies, B) it means there is less money available to invest in eastern Europe, and C) puts strain on existing NATO resources in the face of new threat assessments. NATO has scrambled to put together a quick reaction force, the Spearhead.
At a more mundane level, probing flights by Russian aircraft allow Russia to maintain unit proficiency, assess NATO capabilities, and force NATO to tie up resources to respond. While the 90 second BBC video makes the point that total Russian military spending is far less than that of the U.S., it is a much larger fraction of Russian GDP - which suggests that they really believe such spending is useful and is getting them something they need.
Given all of the above, it's likely that Russian military aviation will continue to make its presence known in the skies over Europe (and probably elsewhere.) For handy reference, the BBC has put together a plane spotter's guide to Russian aircraft, complete with pictures and a description of each. The list includes the Tu-95 MS aka Bear H (Its contra-rotating propellers spin faster than the speed of sound, creating their own sonic boom, making it one of "the loudest combat aircraft ever built", says Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute.); the Tu-160 Blackjack (...capable of supersonic speeds of up to 2,200km/h. "It's essentially a heavier and faster equivalent of the American B1B Lancer," says Bronk. It also has a longer range and can carry more nuclear-capable missiles.); the Tu-22M3 Backfire ("It's not as big as the Bear and the Blackjack," says Bronk. "Its closest Western equivalent is the F-111."); and the MiG-31 Foxhound (Among the world's fastest combat aircraft, they are equipped with onboard radar that can track 24 airborne targets and attack six at a time. But Bronk says: "Although they are extremely fast and carry powerful radar, they are a essentially an evolution of a very old design, the MiG-25, and are no match for the RAF's Typhoons in air-to-air combat.").
Interesting times ahead...