or build the shelterhttp://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/japan-jets-scramble-at-cold-war-levels-as-chinese-and-russian-incursions-increase/ar-AAb23a3Japan jets scramble at Cold-War levels as Chinese and Russian incursions increase Reuters
6 hrs ago
Japan's air force said on Wednesday said jet fighter scrambles have reached a level not seen since the height of the Cold War three decades ago as Russian bombers probe its northern skies and Chinese combat aircraft intrude into its southern air space.
In the year ending March 31, Japanese fighters scrambled 944 times, 16 percent more than the same period the previous year, the country's Self Defence Force said.
That is the second highest number of encounters ever recorded over the 12-month period since records began in 1958 and only one less than a record 944 scrambles in 1984.
"It represents a sharp increase," an SDF spokesman said at a press briefing. While not a direct measure of Russian and Chinese military activity, the numbers nonetheless point to an increase in operations by Japan's two big neighbors.
While coping with the growing military might of a more assertive China which is increasing defense outlays by more than 10 percent a year, Japan is also contending with a military resurgence of a Cold War foe that has gathered pace since Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine last year.
Japan too is upping defense spending, albeit by a smaller margin, to buy new equipment, including longer-range patrol aircraft, cargo jets, helicopter carriers and troop carrying Boeing V-22 Ospreys and Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters.
A non-fiscal boost to military capability will also come from plans by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to loosen constitutional constraints on his nation's defense forces that will allow them to operate more freely overseas and to deepen cooperation with U.S. forces.
Russian bombers and patrol planes often enter Japan's air space close to Japan's northern Hokkaido island and close to four smaller islands which are claimed both by Japan and Russia.
That territorial dispute has prevented Japan and Russia from concluding a formal peace treaty. The Russian aircraft commonly fly circuitous routes around the Japanese archipelago.
Chinese fighter incursions are concentrated in the East China Sea, close to disputed uninhabited islets near Taiwan that Tokyo claims as the Senkaku islands and Beijing dubs the Diaoyu islands.
In the past year, an increased number of Chinese planes have flown through Japanese air space into the Western Pacific, the SDF spokesman said.
(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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http://news.yahoo.com/three-russian-ships-english-channel-000348261.html
UK scrambles jets as Russian planes and ships spottedAFP
April 14, 2015 3:54 PM
London (AFP) - British fighter jets were scrambled on Wednesday in response to the sighting of two Russian military aircraft near UK airspace, hours after three Russian ships were monitored as they entered the English Channel.
"Quick Reaction Alert Typhoon fighter aircraft were launched today after Russian aircraft were identified flying close to UK airspace," said a Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman.
The planes were launched from the Lossiemouth military airbase in northern Scotland.
Britain's Royal Navy earlier kept track of three Russian ships, including a destroyer, after they entered the English Channel, according to the defence ministry.
It is the latest in a string of similar incidents and comes at a time of tense relations between London and Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine and the inquiry into the death of Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko.
"MoD can confirm 3 Russian ships being monitored by @RoyalNavy HMS Argyll through Channel. No exercises seen," the ministry said on its Twitter feed.
"Russian Udaloy class destroyer Severomorsk returning from Mediterranean with tanker and support ship. Due to leave Channel later."
Russia's defence ministry said the ships were en route to the North Atlantic, where they would be taking part in exercises "on anti-air and anti-submarine defence".
The Channel is used frequently and legitimately as a route by Russian warships but NATO countries are on alert over fears that Moscow could attempt to destabilise countries on Europe's eastern flank that were in its orbit during Soviet times.
James Nixey, head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at think-tank Chatham House, said Russia's actions around the UK were designed to send a message.
"Russia is trying to show it has got full spectrum capability warfare," he said.
"It is not a prelude to war but it is a reminder that Russia likes to remind us of -- that it is a power to be reckoned with, not a fading power, which might be closer to the reality.
The Severomorsk, an anti-submarine destroyer, was among four ships which passed through the Channel in November.
A Russian warship was also tracked through the Channel in February while the previous month, Britain summoned the Russian ambassador after Tupolev Tu-95 bombers, known as Russian "bears", were found flying close to British airspace.
According to a report in The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Britain was forced to accept a four-day visit by Russian military inspectors to view UK-led naval war games off the coast of Scotland.
The exercises, which began on Monday, are taking place under the terms of a European arms control treaty.
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http://www.euronews.com/2015/04/14/britains-raf-scrambles-jets-as-russian-bombers-near-uk-airspace/Britain’s RAF scrambles jets as Russian bombers near UK airspace 14/04 17:13 CET
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/23/vladimir-putin-emboldened-by-weak-us-response-to-r/?page=allU.S., allies scramble jets almost daily to repel Russian incursionsMoscow’s military provocations signal return to Cold War-era gamesmanship
By Guy Taylor and Maggie Ybarra - The Washington Times - Thursday, October 23, 2014
Russian military provocations have increased so much over the seven months since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine that Washington and its allies are scrambling defense assets on a nearly daily basis in response to air, sea and land incursions by Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Not only is Moscow continuing to foment unrest in Eastern Ukraine, U.S. officials and regional security experts say Russian fighter jets are testing U.S. reaction times over Alaska and Japan’s ability to scramble planes over its northern islands — all while haunting Sweden’s navy and antagonizing Estonia’s tiny national security force.
The White House months ago leveled economic sanctions on several Russian businesses and political players, and recent weeks have seen President Obama intensify his rhetoric toward Moscow. But many in Washington’s national security community say the response is simply not firm enough and that, as a result, Mr. Putin actually feels emboldened to push the envelope — Cold War-style.
“What’s going on is a radical escalation of aggressive Russian muscle flexing and posturing designed to demonstrate that Russia is no longer a defeated power of the Cold War era,” says Ariel Cohen, who heads the Center for Energy, National Resources and Geopolitics at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Washington.
“The more we retreat, the more we are encouraging Russia to behave in a more aggressive way,” Mr. Cohen said. “We need to be engaging more deeply with our Central Asian allies, but instead we are in the process of abandoning turf to Russia, and it’s wrong — it’s against our interests geopolitically to let Russia feel that they all of a sudden have won all the turf without firing a shot.”
The Obama administration resists such characterizations, asserting that the White House is doing anything but “retreating.”
To the contrary, administration officials say they’re bolstering U.S. support to NATO and several non-NATO Baltic states specifically to confront Mr. Putin. They also assert that the current economic downturn inside Russia — where inflation is reported to have crested to 8 percent in recent weeks — is driven as much by a dip in global oil prices as by the slate of sanctions leveled by the White House in response to Russian meddling in Ukraine.
For his own part, Mr. Obama stopped short of directly addressing the uptick in Russian military maneuvering during a major U.N. speech last month. The president did, however, assert that “Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones.”
He also threatened to “impose a cost on Russia for aggression.”
Mr. Obama’s comments were followed this month by the deployment of some 20 M1A1 Abrams battle tanks and roughly 700 U.S. troops across Poland and three Baltic States — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — a move military officials said was designed to send a message that serious Russian aggression in the area could mean war with NATO.
But Mr. Putin has appeared undeterred. NATO officials confirmed this week that the Russian air force flew an Ilyushin-20 spy plane into Estonian airspace Tuesday, triggering a swift reaction from NATO fighter jets patrolling the area.
The incursion came just days after Sweden made international headlines by scrambling a fleet of naval vessels to search for a suspected submarine sighted about 30 miles off the coast of Stockholm in the Baltic Sea.
Swedish authorities avoided pinning the incident directly on Russia, and Moscow denied involvement. But regional analysts like Mr. Cohen say they’d be surprised if the sub was not Russian.
The development, the analysts say, fits within a growing list of similar Russian actions, including some directly challenging U.S. territory.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled jets to scare off two Russian strategic bombers that suddenly appeared to conduct practice runs in airspace just 65 miles off Alaska in June. A similar incident occurred in September, with U.S. and Canadian fighters scrambling to deter six Russian aircraft, including two nuclear bombers, two fighter jets and two refueling tankers, according to news reports.
Around the same time, Russian ground forces were making the unprecedented move of arresting an Estonian security official at gunpoint near the Baltic nation’s border with Russia. The official is reportedly now in Moscow facing espionage charges.
More worrisome are reports that Japan has had to scramble fighter jets to ward off Russian bombers and spy planes twice as often as usual over the past six months. Japanese government figures released this week show flights dispatched to meet Russian aircraft in the latest six months soared to 324 from 136 over the preceding six months, according to a report by Reuters.
Steve Ganyard, the president of Avascent International, a global security consulting firm in Washington, says Russia’s moves reflect Mr. Putin’s desire to bring about a new era of cat and mouse-style games that were “prevalent in the Cold War.”
Tuesday’s Estonia incursion, for instance, was “quite deliberate,” said Mr. Ganyard, a former Marine Corps fighter pilot who has also held past posts at the Pentagon and State Department.
Mr. Putin is engaged in a ploy to garner international recognition as a way to reassure Russian citizens that their nation remains a formidable military power, he said.
“Military has its own appeal to nationalism, and that is what helps him keep [his] power and keep his approval ratings so high,” he said.
“Putin knows how to play domestic politics,” Mr. Ganyard added. “Right now, one of his platforms is to return Russia to its glory, and part of that means its military glory” by bolstering the “myth of the Red Army saving the motherland.”
In February, Mr. Putin’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, made headlines by claiming the Russian military was engaged in talks with Algeria, Cyprus, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Seychelles, Vietnam and Singapore — and that the Russian navy was seeking permission to use ports in Latin America and Asia.
Such claims are in keeping with “a Russian narrative of a more assertive and powerful country,” said William Pomeranz, a national security analyst at the Wilson International Center for Scholars and Russian law professor at Georgetown University.
Mr. Pomeranz said that while the past decade saw Mr. Putin build a reputation as a “relatively conservative international player,” the Ukraine crisis has pushed the Russian president into a kind of “corner,” creating internal pressure on him to make a show of force to the world.
The crisis began in early 2014 when, in the aftermath of a revolution that forced former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country, pro-Russian forces took control of the Crimean Peninsula. The takeover caused an uproar in Ukraine, and Mr. Putin responded by sending thousands of military troops to the Russian border with the nation.
Mr. Pomeranz said the massing of troops and the “rubbing up” against U.S. and NATO airspace by Moscow are designed to show the Russian military has advanced since its last major international feud — with nearby Georgia in 2008.
“I don’t know whether Putin wanted to reveal that now or if he wanted to, in fact, increase his capability before he showed what Russia was up to,” he said. “But now Europe sees and understands Russia’s capabilities and intentions and, as a result, is reconsidering its commitments and the resources of NATO as well.”
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http://www.businessinsider.com/s-300-air-defense-system-russia-selling-to-iran-2015-4Here's the advanced air defense system that Russia is now offering to IranJeremy Bender Apr. 14, 2015, 12:20 PM
Russia has publicly announced that it is willing to sell Iran one of the world's most advanced air defense systems after a 5-year hiatus.
Although a nuclear deal has yet to be reached with Iran and embargoes remain in place, Moscow has announced that it is ready to send the S-300 air defense system to Tehran.
If the deal goes through, Iran would have an extremely capable air defense system that could deter the threat of force against Iranian military facilities.
The following Reuters graphic depicts how the S-300 system works. In 2013, Russia delivered the defense system to Syria, which contributed to deterring Western intervention in the country.
The S-300 is comprised of four road-mobile vehicle classes that work in tandem to detect and destroy aircraft. The missile launcher vehicles have a range of about 93 miles, can fire at multiple targets, and can down aircraft flying as high as 90,000 feet.
Iran's acquisition of S-300 systems would be “a complete game changer for all fourth-gen aircraft [like the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18]. That thing is a beast and you don’t want to get near it,” a senior US Marine Corps aviator told The Daily Beast.
If delivered, the systems would render Iran's air defenses nearly impenetrable against all but the most advanced US aircraft.
The S-300 "essentially makes Iran attack-proof by Israel and almost any country without fifth-gen [stealth fighter] capabilities. In other words, Iran, with the S-300, can continue to do what they want once those systems are in place without fear of attack from anyone save the US," a senior Air Force commander told The Daily
Basically, the existence of the S-300s would make any military action against Iran extremely difficult and costly — even for the US Military. As the systems are mobile, the US would have difficulty targeting the systems themselves while non-stealth jets would not be able to operate safely over Iran.
The delivery of the system would mitigate the threat of military action against Tehran in case of breaches in the nuclear agreement off the table.
Simultaneously, the weapons deal could lead to a greater axis of cooperation between Russia and Iran throughout the wider Middle East while providing Russia with some much needed money as sanctions continue to wreck the economy.
"The Kremlin is willing to treat the nuclear agreement as a done deal, at least when it comes to unlocking an $800m arms deal at a time when the Russian economy is hurting," Mark Galeotti, a New York University professor specializing on Russia, told Business Insider. "Besides which, it allows Moscow to prove itself a good friend."
Iran expects the missiles by the end of the year.
SEE ALSO:
Russia and Iran just showed how 'they can do whatever they like' right now http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-is-selling-a-game-changing-missile-system-to-iran-2015-4........................................
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/russias-new-invasion-of-ukraine-should-lead-the-west-to-reassess-its-strategy/2015/01/21/4c146368-a0de-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.htmlRussia’s invasion of Ukraine should cause much more than a hiccup in relations
By Editorial Board January 21
EUROPEAN FOREIGN ministers met Monday to consider proposals for resuming diplomatic contacts and cooperation with Russia in a range of areas — a strategy pressed by several governments that wish to paper over the breach opened by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately for the doves, the discussion came just as Russian forces, after several weeks of relative calm, launched a new offensive in eastern Ukraine.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1043236/Georgia-overrun-Russian-troops-scale-ground-invasion-begins.htmlWednesday, Apr 15th 2015 5PM
Georgia 'overrun' by Russian troops as full-scale ground invasion begins................................
http://www.businessinsider.com/lithuania-preparing-for-feared-russian-invasion-2015-3Mar. 16, 2015, 2:51 PM
Why Lithuania is preparing for a Russian invasion.........................................
http://aco.nato.int/nato-tracks-largescale-russian-air-activity-in-europe.aspxNATO Tracks Large-Scale Russian Air Activity in Europe 29 Oct 2014
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Russia invades portuguese air space with strategic bombers 2nd time in 2 daysTwo F16 aircraft of the Portuguese Air Force (PAF) went out on a mission of air defense of the airspace of national responsibility on the 29th of October
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