The Su-27 intercept as seen from the cockpit of the B-1B bomber over the Baltic Sea.
Our friends at Air Forces Monthly have obtained a pretty interesting footage: filmed from inside the cockpit of a “Bone” temporarily deployed to RAF Fairford, UK, to take part in BALTOPS exercise, the short clipo shows a Russian Naval Aviation’s Su-27 Flanker approaching the B-1B’s starboard wing, then banking to pass below the nose of the Lancer.
“AFM was told the Russian pilot acted in a non-aggressive manner throughout the manoeuvre, which saw the fighter assume position off the starboard side before banking and descending below the B-1,” says the story published on AFM’s website.
It’s not clear whether the clip was filmed on the very same day these fantastic shots were taken by U.S. Air Force photographer Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder from the boom position of a KC-135 tanker as a really unusual “formation” consisting of 2x B-1s, 1x B-52 and 1x KC-135 were involved in a photo hop in international airspace over the Baltic Sea when they were joined by a Su-27 Flanker on Friday Jun. 9. In that case the U.S. Air Force stated that the intercept was conducted in a safe and professional way, in contrast with what happened after several previous incidents that the U.S. DoD defined “unsafe” or “unprofessional” with the Russian interceptors maneuvering aggressively in proximity of the American aircraft (read here or here for a couple of examples.)
Indeed, to be honest, the above clip seems to show the Su-27 dangerously close to the U.S. bomber, much more than one would expect from a “safe” maneuver: however, it might be a matter of perspective…
According to AFM, the Flanker in the intercept footage is a Su-27P interceptor belonging to the Fighter Aviation Squadron of the 72 Aviatsionnaya Baza (AvB, Aviation Base) of the Morskaya Aviatsiya Baltiyskogo Flota (MA BF, Naval Aviation of the Baltic Fleet), based at Chkalovsk air base in Kaliningrad Oblast.
H/T Thomas Newdick (@CombatAir) for posting the video.
Take a look at this cool clip of two Spirit bombers arriving in the UK.
On Jun. 9, 2017, two B-2s deployed to RAF Fairford, UK.
Interestingly, the two aircraft, 82-1068 Spirit Of New York (using radio callsign “Mytee 21”) and 88-0329 Spirit Of Missouri (“Mytee 22), launched from their homebase at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, visited a bombing range in the UK before recovering into RAF Fairford.
The following video, filmed by our friend Ben Ramsay, shows the two stealth bombers approaching runway 27 at Fairford, where the Spirits joined the three B-52 Stratofortress and three B-1 Lancer bombers already deployed there to take part in exercise BALTOPS.
Although the U.S. Air Force deploys its bombers to RAF Fairford regularly, it’s quite rare to have the three types on the British base at the same time.
However, the deployment of the “bomber trio” has already taken place last year at Andersen Air Force Base when the three different platforms simultaneously launched from Guam for their first integrated bomber operation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Is the current deployment to the UK a sign that the trio-bomber force is becoming a routine in the way the strategic assets are operated by USAF?
For one week U.S. Air Force’s Southern Command undertook a surge of its operations against the trafficking of illicit drugs into the United States, using bombers flying as NTISR (non-traditional intelligence surveillance reconnaissance) aircraft.
U.S. Southern Command oversees an area covering more than 40 million square miles, a region whose major challenge is the war against trafficking of illicit drugs into the US.
For one week in August 2016, the Southern Command surged its anti-drug smuggling operations with bombers, KC-135 aerial refuelers, E-8 Joint STARS (Surveillance Target Attack Radar System) and E-3 Sentry AEW (Airborne Early Warning) aircraft that expanded their work supporting the United States Coast Guard and the JIATF-South (Joint Inter Agency Task Force South), the U.S. agency leading the fight against narco-traffickers.
Dubbed the “Big Week”, the operation saw the involvement of B-1 Lancers and B-52 Stratofortresses that were assigned the difficult task of flying over large areas of the ocean in search of suspected trafficker boats acting as non-traditional Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (NTISR) platforms.
The heavy bombers contributed to the surveillance mission sharing the data collected by the targeting systems and onboard sensors with multiple Naval-Coast Guard assets, something they usually don’t train too often.
Still, NTISR is a sort-of secondary mission for all the U.S. bombers performing on-call CAS (Close Air Support) in Afghanistan or Iraq, where they augment traditional ISR efforts by means of their targeting pods with downlink capabilities.
The operation resulted in six metric tons of cocaine seized or disrupted, illegal drug which never made it into the United States.
Stratotankers were important to expand Big Week’s operational reach keeping Air Force bombers in the air and adding critical hours to the surveillance mission, whereas intelligence personnel provided the required informational flow between aircraft, maritime, and intelligence assets so that, once detected, drugs could be taken off the water.
Big Week allowed the joint interdiction team to test their training in a real-world environment, cooperating with agencies and in a scenario and area they don’t typically operate out of.
According to the U.S. Air Force”Big Week was a vast operation, meant to show how members of different agencies and services could operate in a joint environment against a common threat. Big Week proved that a determined and organized drug interdiction team could effectively challenge illicit drug trafficking into the United States.”
Two U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress aircraft from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, have arrived at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, on Apr. 9, 2016.
The aircraft, using radio callsign Mighty 71 were monitored by several radiohams on HF frequencies during their flight from the U.S. to the Middle East.
The aircraft will operate in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the air war against ISIS replacing the B-1 Lancers, the last of those returned stateside in January, after a 6-month deployment worth 3,800 munitions on 3,700 targets in 490 sorties. By the way, the B-1s could return to the Mideast this summer after they receive additional cockpit upgrades…
Dealing with the type of mission the B-52s will carry out in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, it will probably be the same of the B-1s: Close Air Support and Air Interdiction delivering a wide variety of PGMs (Precision Guided Munitions), including JDAMs on ISIS positions.
B-1’s take off at Al Udeid, west of Doha, in Qatar, where the U.S. Air Force has based its heavy bombers to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria can become really breathtaking if you observe the head-on departure of a Lancer coming low over you: this is what you can (almost) experience by simply watching the following video.
Noise abatement and safety procedures stateside usually prevent such maneuvers to be performed at Dyess or Ellsworth Air Force Base.
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