It could be my eyes and ears fooling me but last monday morning i heard a weird roaring sound over my house something that didnt sound like the Awacs'es and Apaches and WL-Linx helicopters i'm used to hear flying over my house.... When i looked out the window i saw a strange 4 engined airplane flying above my house... i wasn't able to grab my cam to take a picture. but i did surf to wikipedia.com and it seems like it must have been a Tupolev Tu-95. do these old planes still fly?? and also in military service? or did i see something else....
Cheers Buck
If you are short of everything but enemy, you are in the combat zone.
G'day all. With regards to this, here is a report from my Reuters the other day.
Russian bombers test UK patience again
By Wojciech Moskwa in Oslo
July 20, 2007 09:59pm
TWO Russian Tu-95 bombers made unusually long sorties over the North Sea yesterday, forcing both Norway and Britain to scramble fighter jets to follow the Russian planes, Norway's armed forces said.
The Russian bombers stayed in international air space during their flight, which took them as far south as the region between Norway's Stavanger and Aberdeen in Scotland - centres of the North Sea oil industry.
The incident, the latest of several such sorties in past days, occurred during a period of heightened diplomatic tensions between Russia and Britain over Moscow's refusal to extradite a murder suspect.
“It's a long time since they (Russian bombers) have been that far south,” John Inge Oegland, spokesman for Norway's armed forces, told Reuters.
"I would say that is rather unusual.
“Since they were so far south, the RAF (Britain's Royal Air Force) followed the same procedure and went up to identify them."
When Russian military planes approach Norwegian air space, Norway scrambles fighters to meet and follow them.
Russia's air force commander said this week that such sorties were training flights for the long-range bombers.
“The pilots flew on routes used for international flights,” Colonel Yuri Pomelov, an information officer for the Russian military, said.
"We strictly followed international agreements on the use of airspace."
Cold War
Norway said it was not unusual for Russian military planes to fly over international waters across the Barents Sea and then either turn south into the Norwegian Sea or continue flying west over the Atlantic, before turning around.
Oegland said the apparent increase in Russian sorties along Norwegian air space follows a major exercise by Russia's Northern Fleet in the Russian Barents Sea.
“In such small exercises (as these sorties) they are not obliged to inform us,” he said.
"We obviously watch it but it hasn't raised any concerns.
“The Norwegian and Russian military have good working relations.”
During the Cold War, Mr Oegland said, similar Russian training sorties took place “nearly every day” but their pace slowed significantly in the mid-1990s before picking up again in past years along with funding for Russia's military machine.
Norway also scrambled fighters yesterday to follow two Tu-160 Russian bombers, a more modern jet-engine strategic bomber than the propeller-driven Tu-90, which passed near Norwegian air space in the Barents Sea.
The Tu-160s flew west into the Atlantic, where they were met by two tankers for air-to-air refuelling, before heading back to Russia, Oegland said.
Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:23 am Post subject: Re: Tupolev Tu-95
king_tiger_tank wrote:
Buck_Compton wrote:
do these old planes still fly?? and also in military service? or did i see something else....
Cheers Buck
well after a quick look around the web, many sites say that the TU-95 "Bear" is still used in military service.
Hey thanks for replying. but i had a chat with a neighbour he had also seen the plane passing along. he was also in doubt that it might have been a tupolev. Maybe we might have seen a civ variation of it (see wikipedia) it was flying to high to be able to indentify that.... My feeling says it would be very weird if it was a russian tupolev. and if so this one should be out of service for a while. cant think of any reason what an in service tupolev would be doing so close to a nato base
Cheers buck
If you are short of everything but enemy, you are in the combat zone.
Well tu-95 is from the late 50s and so? It's old yeah, but possibly good enough to bomb germany and possible EU and NATO targets. Also does anybody of you know anything of the russian doctrine? Do they get the air superiority first, because that they can't achieve that due to lack of fighters.
if russia would bomb european targets (most of the powerful countires are in NATO) they would get themselves more than just a bloody nose
they can´t assemble enough bombers to take out the majority of european fighters and would lose more than 80% of their bombers while they try to get close to the targets
cold war scenarios can be interesting, but in reality russia can not win
if russia would bomb european targets (most of the powerful countires are in NATO) they would get themselves more than just a bloody nose
they can´t assemble enough bombers to take out the majority of european fighters and would lose more than 80% of their bombers while they try to get close to the targets
cold war scenarios can be interesting, but in reality russia can not win
You'd think Russia knows this already and would send escort fighters?
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even if they would achieve air superiority in central europe, they would still face the airforce of western europe
and the usa and canada would be on the jump to get involved since both are nato members
Actually Tu-95 is one of the fastest propeller driven aircraft in the world, also it's practical, and effective. His maximum speed is 925 km/h compared to B-52's max speed of 1,000 km/h (I'm comparing because Bear is a counterpart of the B-52). It was modified to carry cruise missles, and now is ready to take on the most challenging strategic bombing tasks. NATO largely underestimated it, mostly because of it's prop configuration. But the strenght of the Bear lies in it's contra-rotating props, giving it the speed the other propeller driven engines lack. The maritime patrol craft have a powerfull sea search radar to look for enemy surface ships, most notably the Aircraft carriers. Do you understand now why the Bear is still in service? Also the bears today wouldn't drop bombs on their targets but would rather hit them with cruising missles. The current Bears in Russian service are 1980's/1990's batch. I also wanted to say that people are still underestemating the potent Russian military force, take the russian subs for example, the Americans disregarded them as loud and obsolete, but panic ensued among the USN when they couldn't detect and track an Schuka (Akula) class submarine of the USA coast.
Yes you are right the Bears were equipped, and probably still are with stand off weapons, and in the 70/80's were expected to be used against the oil/gas rigs in the North sea. Also as you stated they would have been used more in the martime role than against ground targets like airfields and command and control centres.
The Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG) had attached to each of the divisions/armies a number of chemical battalions, it was expected that these would have attacked the NATO airfields with persistant weapons to hinder their activity prior to a ground attack.
Lucky for all of us this situation never arose .
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