A new video shows the Su-24s and Ka-27 buzzing the American destroyer.
The U.S. Navy has released new footage of two Russian Su-24M attack aircraft making low-altitude passes near USS Donald Cook, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, in the Baltic Sea on April 11 and 12, 2016.
Nearly two dozen clips were obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request.
Noteworthy, along with the Fencers, the videos also show Kamov Ka-27 (NATO reporting name ‘Helix’) helicopters flying quite close to the ship.
According to the Russian MoD the Fencers skirted the Donald Cook whilst the US warship was in international waters some 70 km from a Russian Navy base.
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As already written in the past, the low passes that the Russian Sukhois performed near the ship (within 1,000 feet once coming as close as 30 feet to the destroyer) were pretty unusual and aggressive but not particularly worrisome: the Su-24s depicted in the footage and photographs are unarmed and probably only conducting “simulated attacks” on the American warship at sea not too far from home.
Low passages of Russian planes on U.S. Navy warships (and vice versa) are somehow frequent and usually uneventful. However, once, a show of force had a different ending when, on May 25, 1968, a Soviet Tu-16 Badger-F crashed into the sea close to USN carrier USS Essex in the Norwegian sea after a few flybys.
