- MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia
staged a major military exercise on opposite sides of the globe on Wednesday,
forcing Japanese and Norwegian fighters to scramble as Russian bombers
approached over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
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- Japan said six Russian aircraft actually entered its
airspace, but Moscow denied this. Norway said Russian planes came close
to its territory but flew on toward Scotland, and a Norwegian spokesman
said it looked like a major linked exercise.
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- A Russian Defense Ministry source confirmed this, but
was coy on the details of an operation which showed the air force's growing
confidence under President Vladimir Putin and its potential role should
Washington deploy an anti-missile shield.
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- ``It was all in the framework of the same exercise,''
the source told Reuters.
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- Asked whether the exercise was over or would continue,
the ministry source said: ``That's secret information.''
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- Wednesday's incidents involved Tupolev Tu-22 ``Backfire''
and Tu-160 ``Blackjack'' long-range nuclear-capable bombers operating at
opposite ends of the vast Russian Federation.
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- Russia and Japan fell out over reports that Russian planes
violated Japanese airspace -- for the first time in six years and, embarrassingly,
just hours after Putin and the Japanese prime minister agreed to hold a
peace-talk summit.
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- In Tokyo, the Foreign Ministry called in the Russian
ambassador to protest about what Japan said was a double intrusion into
its airspace by two fighters and four swing-wing Tupolev Tu-22 bombers
near the northern island of Hokkaido.
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- RUSSIAN AIR FORCE ON A ROLL?
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- Russia's air force said its planes were training near
Japan, but denied the aircraft had violated Japanese airspace. It said
the Tu-22s and two accompanying Sukhoi Su-27s, called ''Flanker'' in the
West, flew along the Japanese coastline but not over it.
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- ``After the statements from the Japanese side we analyzed
all our flights once again,'' Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told
journalists in Moscow. ``There were no violations.''
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- In Norway, armed forces spokesman Lieutenant Colonel
John Espen Lien told Reuters his country scrambled two F-16 fighters to
identify two Tu-160 bombers flying south off the Arctic island of Andoya,
in international airspace, at about 0100 GMT.
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- Lien said the last alert was two years ago. Russia had
signaled to NATO -member Norway it would stage a major exercise.
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- Russia's air force seems to be on a roll.
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- Late last year, fighters buzzed a U.S. aircraft carrier
in the South China Sea three times and then rubbed it in by sending close-up
photographs to the ship by e-mail.
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- Nuclear-capable Tu-95 ``Bear'' strategic bombers have
also been training in the Arctic close to Alaska and Norway. Russia has
acquired other unwanted Tu-160 bombers from Ukraine.
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- The air force has been more visibly active of late than
for several years. Putin himself flew to rebel Chechnya as a passenger
aboard a twin-seat MiG-29 fighter plane last year soon after he took over
from Boris Yeltsin as president.
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- New U.S. President George W. Bush is intent on developing
and deploying an anti-missile defense.
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- Russia has said its long-range strategic air strength
needs to be beefed up as one of a number of possible countermeasures that
could also include evasive, superfast cruise missiles. Moscow is also not
keen to see NATO enlarge further eastward.
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- Next week Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov holds
his first talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell in Cairo and NATO
Secretary-General George Robertson visits Moscow. The exercise serves as
a double hint of what Russia has in mind.
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- But Russia is far from being a ``Top Gun'' utopia.
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- Aviation fuel is still tight and flying hours minimal
because of cash shortages, except for the Chechnya campaign.
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- The AVN independent military news agency said pilots
from Russia's ace show teams logged 24 flying hours on average last year,
and some aviators did not even get into the air at all.
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