Jets & Planes but no UAV's here.

[Imp]

This will be interesting I am no plane buff but if the airspace is hot beating the F-15s multirole capabilities is a tall order, I will be very surprised if the F-35 is as capable.
F-15s bugbear is its probably expensive to run but I bet its still the deep penetration plane of choice.
Let the others operate in the "safe zone"

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

From a discussion from early last Fall, I had said that I didn't feel that we were in "The Cold War" again but more like "The Chilly War" dealing with the airspace violations of some European countries by Russian military aircraft. But after this incident with the USS Cook earlier this week in which the CPA was within 75 feet of the bridge, this represents an escalation not seen since the mid 80's early 90's. It would seem we are heading back into "The 2nd Cold War". These over flights are normal but what's not is how close they "buzzed" the Cook. A sneeze at the wrong time at that altitude and speed could've resulted in the loss of life and who knows what political or other issues would've resulted from that. A good call by the C.O. to keep the crew and ship "weapons tight" to prevent an incident. The ROE after the first pass, would've allowed the C.O. to engage if he felt the ship was in imminent danger of attack, this was confirmed by the Secretary of State Thursday morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylONaw4ODuk
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/14/europe...ght/index.html

Su-24 at CPA...


It'll be interesting to see what the response from the Russians will be in about four to six weeks, when we have over 13K troops in Poland to conduct our largest exercise in Europe since the Cold War ended.

Regards,
Pat