Massive Russian Air Excercises Diverted NORAD's attention on 9-11

[Michael K.]

Something to consider while pondering the rest of the evidence:

With credit to :

http://thespiritoftruth.blogspot.com/2010/09/russia-was-behind-911.html

1.)

http://web.archive.org/web/20010911200655/http:/www.washtimes.com/national/20010911-581488.htm

Russian warplanes harass U.S. craft over Pacific

September 11, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

 Russian warplanes threatened patrolling U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft over the Pacific Ocean last week as the American planes monitored a military exercise in the region, The Washington Times has learned.

     At one point during the aerial harassment, a MiG-31 interceptor pilot flew his jet within 50 feet of a P-3 maritime patrol and reconnaissance plane.

     The incident was similar to a Chinese aerial intercept that resulted in a collision earlier this year.

     One alarming sign of the Russian intercept was a radio message sent by one MiG-31 pilot to his base stating his fire-control radar had "locked on" to the U.S. surveillance plane, U.S. intelligence officials said. A radar "lock" is a pilot's final step before firing a guided missile.

     "It was a threatening action," said one official.

     A senior defense official said the P-3 flights were legal and that the intercepts occurred in international airspace. This official said the P-3 pilots reported afterward that the Russian warplanes conducted the intercepts in a "professional" manner, despite the closeness of a pass by one of the MiG-31s.

     In all, five MiG-31 Foxhounds took part in intercepting two P-3s on Sept. 4 and 5, officials said.

     "One of them did get close, but the [P-3] pilot said he didn't feel endangered," the senior defense official said.

     The Russian pilot "knew he was getting too close" and eventually broke off the intercept, the senior official said.

     According to the officials, the Russian pilot performed an intercept maneuver called a "thump" -- the MiG-31 flew close to P-3 then gunned its engine. "The crew got bounced around by jet wash, but that was about it," said an administration official.

     "This was not like Wang Wei," the defense official said, referring to a Chinese F-8 pilot the Pentagon has called a "hot dog." The Chinese pilot was killed on April 1 when his fighter collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3E electronic surveillance plane over the South China Sea. The EP-3E is an electronic spying version of the anti-submarine P-3 plane.

     The latest incident occurred over the northern Pacific Ocean as the P-3 aircraft monitored a Russian submarine exercise near the Kamchatka Peninsula -- home to the major submarine base at Petropavlovsk.

     The P-3 normally flies with a crew of 11 military service members.

     The P-3s were monitoring an exercise that involved a Russian Oscar II attack submarine and a Delta III ballistic missile submarine, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

     The Russian intercepts of U.S. surveillance aircraft come as U.S. and Chinese military officials are set to meet in Guam later this week.

     The meeting will be the first session of a U.S.-Chinese military maritime commission to be held since the F-8 collision with the EP-3E. The two sides are set to discuss ways of avoiding future incidents.

     After the April 1 collision with the Chinese interceptor, the U.S. EP-3E was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan island, in the South China Sea, and its 24 crew members were held captive for 11 days before being released.

     Disclosure of the U.S.-Russian incident comes at a delicate time for the Bush administration, which is seeking to coax Moscow into agreeing to U.S. missile defense deployments.

     Talks on the issues are set to be held in the next several days.

     President Bush spoke by telephone yesterday to Russian President Vladimir Putin. An administration official said the aerial encounter in the north Pacific was not discussed.

     The administration has not issued a formal diplomatic protest to the Russians, an administration official said, unlike the response to Chinese aerial intercepts. Diplomatic notes were sent to Beijing to protest dangerous Chinese aerial encounters in the weeks leading up to the April 1 incident.

     A spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, which is responsible for the P-3 flights, declined to comment.

     Meanwhile, Russian strategic air forces began a major exercise in the northern Pacific yesterday. The maneuvers will include practice missile attacks, Russia's official Itar-Tass news agency reported.

     Strategic Tu-160 Blackjack and Tu-95 Bear bombers and Tu-22 and IL-78 tanker aircraft reportedly will take part. The exercises are set to continue until Friday.

     In response to the war games, the Air Force announced on Sunday that it is sending additional fighter aircraft "as necessary" to Alaska and northern Canada to monitor the exercises.

     "Norad is the eyes and ears of North America, and it is our mission to ensure that our air sovereignty is maintained," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Ken Pennie, deputy commander in chief of Norad.

     "Although it is highly unlikely that Russian aircraft would purposely violate Canadian or American airspace, our mission of vigilance must be sustained," the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) statement said.

     The statement said the additional U.S. jets would remain at two bases in Alaska and one in Canada until the end of the Russian exercises.

     The command took similar action in December as part of an operation called "Northern Denial" after Russian long-range bombers were moved to northern bases in a similar deployment.

2.)

http://web.archive.org/web/20060928051722/http://www.norad.mil/newsroom/news_releases/2001/090901.htm

NORAD Maintains Northern Vigilance

Sept. 9, 2001

CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN AFS, Colo. – The North American Aerospace Defense Command shall deploy fighter aircraft as necessary to Forward Operating Locations (FOLS) in Alaska and Northern Canada to monitor a Russian air force exercise in the Russian arctic and North Pacific ocean.

"NORAD is the eyes and ears of North America and it is our mission to ensure that our air sovereignty is maintained," said Lieutenant-General Ken Pennie, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of NORAD. "Although it is highly unlikely that Russian aircraft would purposely violate Canadian or American airspace, our mission of vigilance must be sustained."

NORAD-allocated forces will remain in place until the end of the Russian exercise.

NORAD conducted operation Northern Denial from December 1 to 14, 2000 in response to a similar, but smaller scale, Russian deployment of long-range bombers at northern Russian air bases. NORAD-allocated forces were deployed to three FOLS, two in Alaska and one in Canada. More than 350 American and Canadian military men and women were in involved in the deployment.

3.)

http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/weapons/maneuver.htm

SEPTEMBER 2001

Maneuvers to simulate defense against a large-scale airspace attack began on 10 September 2001. According to Air Force chief Anatoliy Kornukov, they were intended to cover the whole Arctic, as well as northern parts of the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, including the vicinity of Norway, Iceland, the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The main task was reportedly to penetrate the air defense of NATO and North America (NORAD). As part of the exercise, long-range bombers were moved to auxiliary bases in Anadyr, Tiksi, and Vorkuta. A new element of these maneuvers was, according to newspaper reports, training for the use of long-range ALCMs outside the reach of NORAD (since Russia has had long-range nuclear ALCMs since the 1980s, apparently these reports meant conventional ALCMs, which began to appear in the Russian Armed Forces only in the late 1990s).  The only real launches planned in these regions involved short-range missiles launched from Tu-22M3 over the Kamchatka Peninsula in a simulated attack against an aircraft carrier group.

The plan was abruptly changed immediately after news of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC on 11 September 2001 reached Moscow. To avoid possible complications and misperceptions, the Air Force terminated all "practical activities" planned for the ongoing maneuvers following a request from the United States. This included a termination of flights not only toward U.S. territory, but also "around the corner" toward Norway and Iceland. Launches of short-range ALCMs from five Tu-22M3 bombers (three belonging to the Naval Air Command and two from the Air Force) over Kamchatka against seaborne targets were still conducted, but only within Russian territorial waters. Also, both heavy and medium bombers practiced missile launches at an internal Russian test range near the Caspian sea.

Sources:
[1] Yuriy Golotyuk, "Bombardirovshchiki letyat na vraga," Vremya novostey, 11 September 2001.
[2] Yuriy Golotyuk, "Yaderniy konflikt otstavit," Vremya novostey, 12 September 2001.
[3] "Pod Saratovom nachalis ucheniya dalney aviatsii," RIA Novosti, 13 September 2001.
[4] Ivan Safronov, "Rossiyskaya dalnyaya aviatsiya uletela nedaleko," Kommersant-Daily, 15 September 2001.
[5] "Na Kamchatke zavershilis komandno-shtabnyye ucheniya Tikhookeanskogo Flota," Kommersant-Daily, 19 September 2001.