Back in the “bad” old days of the Cold War, the “end of the world” was a concept closely akin to the weather: Everybody talked about it a great deal, but no one actually did anything. From our Navy-centric point of view, we always assumed that the Soviet Union’s Godless Communist Plot to Dominate the World by First Incinerating It would commence with a regimental-sized raid of Tu-22 Backfire bombers striking whatever aircraft carrier battle group it was that had the misfortune to be at sea when the balloon went up.
In order to find such a battle group – the oceans being largish fields of maneuver, like – they would first have had to launch a reconnaissance effort, typically using a variant of the Tu-95 Bear. Once a westward wending carrier group had gotten roughly half way between Hawaii and Japan – close to the curiously named “Midway Island” – it would be within the feasibility arc for such a land-based reconnaissance effort. This waterspace we labeled the “Bear Box”, and great efforts were made to deny our potential adversary initial, rough or fine targeting information.
It was a kind of cat and mouse game, with the Bears filling in for the questing cat, and the carrier serving as the hiding mouse, albeit a mouse that was ready and able to launch and sustain fighters bristling with missiles and attitude, should ever a Bear get across the tripwire. Once joined aboard the Bear’s wing, jolly salutes would often be exchanged between the fighter crew and those of the Tupolev, while each took photographs of the other for intelligence purposes.
It was not unheard of for their tube operators to press pornographic magazines against the blister glass if they were in a good mood, or “pressed hams” against the windows if they were feeling a bit more cross-grained. All in good fun in the spirit of the day, although the fighter crew would just as cheerfully – if not more so – flame the Bear down to the sparkling sea below if the crew performed anything even sniffing of a hostile act against the carrier herself. There were some close calls – it was not unheard of for a low-flying Bear to try to scrape his escorting fighter off into the sea by turning into him suddenly, for example – but for the most part everyone minded their P’s and Q’s. It was the end of the world we were playing with after all.
Initial targeting information could come from the intercept and localization of long range communication nets, so these were often shut down once entering “the Box”. Unique aircraft carrier radar and navigation aids could provide rough targeting and identification, so these were secured once we had been made aware that a Bear was airborne. Since those unique emitters that helped the Bear crews pluck the carrier out of the chaff that is all the rest of the ships at sea at any given moment were the very same ones that we aviators used to find our way home to Mom, that would necessitate the use of “EMCON” or emissions controlled launch and recovery procedures. Professionally executed these were a thing of precision and joy, but they were non-trivially difficult and any airborne ineptitude offered equal chances of humiliation and hilarity on the one hand (depending upon your perspective) or getting lost and running out of gas a long way from home on the other.
Few things, I think, can be more thoroughly demoralizing than transitioning in a brief space of time from being a fighter pilot with mastery over all your domain to being a search and rescue candidate, floating in a one-man raft in the great broad sea, hoping that someone who hadn’t the slightest idea where you were might somehow find you. These things happened.
After the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union decomposed into its various component parts, we continued sending ships westward while our erstwhile competitors turned their eyes inward for a time.
Russia’s strategic bombers have resumed Cold War-style long-haul missions to areas patrolled by NATO and the United States, top generals said on Thursday.
A Russian bomber flew over a U.S. naval base on the Pacific island of Guam on Wednesday and “exchanged smiles” with U.S. pilots who had scrambled to track it, said Major-General Pavel Androsov, head of long-range aviation in the Russian air force…
President Vladimir Putin has sought to make Russia more assertive in the world. Putin has boosted defense spending and sought to raise morale in the armed forces, which were starved of funding following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Androsov said the sortie by the two turboprop Tu-95MS bombers, from a base near Blagoveshchensk in the Far East, had lasted for 13 hours. The Tu-95, codenamed “Bear” by NATO, is Russia’s Cold War icon and may stay in service until 2040.
“I think the result was good. We met our colleagues — fighter jet pilots from (U.S.) aircraft carriers. We exchanged smiles and returned home,” Androsov said.
Ivan Safranchuk, Moscow office director of the Washington-based World Security Institute, said he saw nothing extraordinary in Moscow sending its bombers around the globe.
Well, given that Russia’s GDP ranks eleventh in the world – just behind Brazil and just ahead of South Korea – I suppose we’ll have a number of more assertive players flying world-wide reconnaissance missions soon.
Or not.
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Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are traveling together on a train when suddenly it lurches to a stop. Stalin has the conductor shot. The train doesn’t move. Khrushchev rehabilitates the conductor. The train still doesn’t move. Brezhnev closes the curtains and says, “Now, we’re moving.”
I wouldn’t launch the alert-5 just quite yet. US defense spending is still 6 times that of Russia’s (although their yearly increases have been indeed been sizeable). And I believe their military spending, as a percentage of their 11th ranked GDP, is still less than our percentage of GDP.
Right now I believe there are far more immediate and greater threats. And in the interim, a few over-flights might relieve some of the monotony of our underutilized, conventional forces.
Pan Filterman,
But you know that much of that portion of our defense spending that goes into personnel costs is significantly less than ours – the other disturbing thing of course is how the newer, more “realpolitik” Russians are becoming more open to the use of the kinds of weapons we think of as last resort as a means of leveraging their conventional weakness. And of course there are more immediate, greater threats, but part of keeping things together is to learn to do the geopolitical equivilent of chew gum and walk at the same time.
Gotta love Russian humor. In the bad old days, the joke went:
Q: What is the tallest building in Moscow?
A: The Lubyanka Prison, because you can see all the way to Siberia from the basement. That’s where the cells were/are.
With the Russians everything is a mass or an orgy.
Casca,
Heh. The old Soviet joke about employment:
“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
Respects,
Captain,
I remember being on the fantail of the [i]California[/i] for one reason or another, well west of Hawaii, watching the Bears/Backfires go by. This was 1986 or so.
Then you guys would buzz us for fun I assume. It was pretty cool. “Our guys are on it,” we’d say. I really wonder if I saw you pass our ship.
But then I’m sure the “G” elements of our CGN were on it, too.
It’s about damn time the Russians got back in the ball game.
“Intercept them at no more than 200nm-but no less either” Which when you consider how really fast the Bear went for a prop driven airplane, sometimes posed a challenge.
But it was never dull. At least it makes manning alerts worthwhile again.
Awwww…. da Bears missed US…
Rat got all huffy in the press about this..first I’ve heard from him in a while from out thar.
O’course Bear intercepts are something he can understand. LOL.
b2
If Russia is getting all spendy on defense again, I wonder how this plays in the China that doesn’t need a Sugar Daddy with weapon systems anymore? Seems this exercise covers two bases: 1) The USA recognizes that the USSR (reformed) is still in the game, and 2) China gets a slap-down that no matter how many subs they build Russia is the top dog in the fight.
Personally, I’m kind of hoping on item 2.
– Max
Wonder how many man-weeks of maintenance and how many rust-bucket Tu-95s will surrender their parts to get those two birds back up in the air again…
fliterman,
It’s been said here before that our defense spending as a percentage of GDP isn’t just about weapons systems. It also goes for healthcare and veterans benifits. So, I’m not sure it’s fair to poopoo the Russians on that basis alone. That being said, I do agree we have some more pressing threats facing us right now.
Jim C
Jim,
If you check again, I think you will find that the money spent by the Veterans Affairs Department is not included in the Federal Budget as military or defense spending. It is entirely separate.
Also excluded from the DoD budget are our nuclear weapons production and maintenance (DoE), Homeland Security, and the “Black Budget” which is not listed as Federal spending at all, and is not included in any published military spending figures.
Iraq and Afghanistan have also been excluded from the Federal military budget as they have been funded mostly by extra-budgetary “supplementary appropriations” outside of the Federal budget.
Nevertheless, the international organization that monitors worldwide defense spending (SIPRI) including the Russians and the Chinese and many others does a pretty good job of comparing apples to apples in their world defense-spending and other databases.
What I wanna know is, does anybody have any postable pics of Bear crewmen mooning US aviators? As I remarked on another thread, I think I’m up to a social age of about 15 now, (honest!) so I think that would be teh funny!
(Sadly, my actual chronological physiological age, along with my BAC, drives me to say g’night, folks!
“exchanged smile”….
How much you wanna bet that was a middle-finger salute accompanied by a shit-eating grin?
“exchanged smiles”….
How much you wanna bet that was a middle-finger salute accompanied by a shit-eating grin?
guess that was worth repeating, along with the corrected “smiles”, eh?
*groan*
I’m late to this party – but want to share my favorite bear quote from my time on the Chucky V. This is what I had the pleasure of hearing over the 5 mc on an interesting day, “Now launch the alert 5 fighters. Initial vector, overhead.”