A Russian fighter aircraft made an “unsafe close range intercept” with a U.S. Navy jet over the Black Sea on Wednesday.
Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said in an emailed statement that the Russian Su-27 spent 19 minutes intercepting the U.S. P-8A Poseidon and that the P-8 was conducting “routine operations in international airspace.”
“U.S. Navy aircraft and ships routinely interact with Russian units in the area and most interactions are safe and professional,” Davis said. “However, we have concerns when there is an unsafe maneuver like this. These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions, and could result in a miscalculation or accident.”
The incident is just one in a series of interactions this year between Russian and U.S. forces that are reminiscent of the Cold War, when unsafe flybys and aerial shows of force were a common occurrence.
In April, there were encounters over the Baltic Sea involving Russian aircraft buzzing the USS Donald Cook and an RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in two separate incidents. The Cook encountered a flight of two Russian swing-wing Su-24 bombers that came within 30 feet of the destroyer’s rear deck and the U.S. aircraft was on a “routine” mission when a Su-27 barrel rolled over it from wing tip to wing tip.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Thomas Gibbons-Neff
