Russian strategic bombers near Canada practice cruise missile strikes on US

originally posted by: _Del_

originally posted by: victor7
a reply to: _Del_

Btw Del, would you be able to tell what benefit the opposing parties get from these "stupid incursions" and teasing the AD radars etc.

Mostly ELINT these days. What frequencies the air defense radars are using, same for comms, so maybe if you have to do it for real you've got a head start on jamming them. You can learn bout how they react and how long it takes them to notice and then to come up to visit, etc, etc.

i would also include the psychological warfare area. It forces the citizens of said country to ask why these aircraft are close and penetrating the outer defense zones.

a reply to: Xcathdra

Only makes the news on a slow news day. People don't generally know or care.

Having said that, you can cause a few wrinkles in the brows of the professionals whose job it is to detect you and come escort you. In that sense it is a bit of a PsyOp. For example, you can piggy-back in with other traffic and then break away just before entering territorial airspace, and then scoot for home before they get eyeballs on you. Leaves them with more questions than answers, and when you do something like that, you're just about guaranteed a real response from the home team, which you can hoover up all that data as well. Same thing applies to coming in very low, or very high and fast.
But mostly it's just a slow Sunday-stroll to just outside territorial airspace picking up anything of interest (radio chatter, pictures, radar images, track missile tests or naval/ground exercises, etc). Mostly a game of "I'm not touching you... but I'm thiiis close".

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Why they don't just fly some UFOs over to the Bombers and make them disappear is beyond me lol. Hell just fly a Raptor up their six and pump a few missiles into them and Russia wont know what happened. If they keep disappearing maybe they wont send anymore over.

a reply to: Patriotsrevenge

Because they are in international airspace and noone wants to start a shooting war?