“Two Russian aircraft made an ‘unsafe, unprofessional’ intercept of a US Air Force B-52 bomber on Friday over the Black Sea and in international waters,” according to the US Air Force. “The Russia pilots crossed within 100 feet of the nose of the B-52 multiple times and also caused turbulence to the B-52 restricting its ability to maneuver,” the official statement said. Story here.
Well, of course. Our B-52 was flying over the friggin’ Black Sea. You wouldn’t like it either, sitting at your desk in Sevastapol with colonel’s epaulets on your shoulders. Americans flipping you the bird. That’s like flying Bears off the coast of Louisiana. (As far as I know, they only do it off the coast of Alaska.)
Aggressive intercepts, ship bumpings, etc., are de rigeur, preplanned, and scripted. So are the replies. They buzz you, your pilots radio “съешь меня, хуесосы” and flip open the bomb bay doors to show ’em the missiles, and back on base your duty officer pulls out Standard Complaint Form No. 20-FM167-1236-Russia (ver. 8/20), fires it off over the red fax line, and back comes “Мой член больше твоего члена” on Standard Reply Form No. 19-RB188-7773-Yanks (ver. 6/19) (the Cuban version says “Yanquis”, and their form numbers always higher than ours; that’s a petty ego thing) and everybody goes to bed.
Another day at work. Tomorrow, same-old, same-old, more same-same. Until there’s an accident and everybody starts shooting.
(Ed. note — translations nsfw or small children.)
It is all part of the game, but the Russians do play rough but there are ways to ensure good behavior from them such as reminding them our ships have defensive guns that can be live and our B=52s pilots can be authorized to defend themselves with the aircrafts guns when Russian flyers are too aggressive. Or accidents can happen. The Russians are much more polite these days toward the Turks since they shot down a Russian plane. That [expletive deleted] American President told the Russians exactly this and they did not believe him until they got shot at. Their attitude immediately changed.