Russia’s newest Su-30 multirole jets and Su-24 bombers practiced attack runs on NATO warships in the Black Sea

2015-03-04T22:04:18-05:00

On Mar. 3, a formation made of three Su-30s and four Su-24s overflew the NATO ships “to practice penetrating anti-air systems,” as affirmed by a source at the Sevastopol naval base who spoke to the Russian state agency.

Interestingly, the Russians believe these missions are used for training purposes by both sides: “These ships’ crews are doubtlessly conducting exercises in repelling air attacks from our planes, which gives our pilots the opportunity to gain experience in maneuvering and conducting aerial reconnaissance both in the range of anti-air systems and outside their range.”

Close encounters between Russian planes and NATO ships around the globe happen quite frequently (do you of Tu-95 Bear flew quite close to USS Nimitz in the Pacific?); they have just become a bit more frequent in the Black Sea since last year’s Russian annexation of Crimea: following the invasion of the peninsula, Moscow has moved combat planes to the local airbases and some of them pay visit to the NATO frigates in the vicinity every now and then.

Read more:
http://theaviationist.com/2015/03/04/su-30-and-su-24-over-nato-ships/

Russia’s newest Su-30 multirole jets and Su-24 bombers practiced attack runs on NATO warships in...

Russia’s newest multirole fighter jets have been using NATO ships in the Black Sea to practice attack scenarios. Russian Su-30s and Su-24s aircraft from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet based i…

Response by CW5 Private RallyPoint Member made Mar 5 at 2015 12:35 PM

2015-03-05T12:35:50-05:00

I guess Russia sees NATO (and the USA) as one of their potential top foes, so this training is understandable from the Russian perspective, but I think it's unacceptable from the U.S. perspective. I wonder how they would respond if we overflew their ships with our fighter jets and bombers. Or do we already do that? I'm guessing not.

Response by CPT Ahmed Faried made Jul 6 at 2015 9:08 PM

2015-07-06T21:08:48-04:00

They do know that our Aegis warships can knock out jets right?