The Russian Air Force has released a video that features a short clip filmed from inside a TU-95 'Bear' long-range bomber as it was being escorted by two F-22 stealth aircraft off the Alaskan coast during the latest in what's been a string of tense intercepts this year.
The incident occurred a week ago and made international headlines. As we reported at the time two Russian bombers were intercepted by the US stealth fighters in international airspace within 200 miles of Alaska's coast in the morning hours of May 11. NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) confirmed the incident in a public statement, which involved the massive Russian planes being escorted away from the US coastline for 40 minutes while in international airspace the whole time.
Still Frame from video taken inside the 'Bear' bomber showing the two F-22 stealth aircraft escorting the Russian plane.
NORAD and USNORTHCOM spokesman Canadian Army Maj. Andrew Hennessy described of the encounter: "At approximately 10 a.m. ET, two Alaskan-based NORAD F-22 fighters intercepted and visually identified two Russian TU-95 'Bear' long-range bomber aircraft flying in the Air Defense Identification Zone around the western coast of Alaska, north of the Aleutian Islands."
While the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged the incident in the immediate aftermath — adding the detail that US monitoring jets never came closer than 100 meters to the Russian bombers — it has now gone further and released its in-flight footage of what happened during the intercept just off the port side of the plane.
However, judging from the footage, it actually does appear the US jets came within 100 meters of the Russian aircraft, if not very close to within that range.
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It's somewhat standard for the planes to get so close in order to confirm VID (Visual Identification) by the intercepting fighter aircraft, but Russia for its part, took issue with early statements that this was an "intercept" — which occurred within the US Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) — said to extend approximately 200 miles off Alaska's western coast. NORAD itself confirmed at the time that the Russian aircraft never entered US airspace, according to NORAD's statement.
The Russian head of its long-range aviation operations, Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash, commented in an article corresponding with the release of the new footage that "no one intercepted anyone."
General Kobylash explained: in the report originally published in the Russian language publication Zvezda:
As for the last such flight, only one pair of US Air Force F-22 fighters have escorted our aircraft. Just one, it says that a certain effect of surprise has worked. Usually, during the execution of such flights, we are escorted to five or seven aircraft, while escorts are carried out by fighters of various states. I want to note that during this flight no one intercepted anyone. US Air Force planes accompanied our aircraft in the...