Tupolev Honey
I had this post mostly drafted out on Saturday, at which point I thought I had this topic boxed. Today's events (Tuesday 11 Mar 08) had me adding a couple of sentences to the last part.
 In the news again the other week were Bears in the Air
U.S. Carrier Intercepts Russian Bombers - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog. Russkies and their pesky aircraft
Tupolev - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Flying over our ships. Sky falls, cold war returns
U.S. military weighing if Russia in Cold War pose | International | Reuters. I was puzzled; I thought this story had been dealt with months earlier. It turns out the Russians having practiced their out-of-area flights were now keen to recreate in full an intercept flyover of western naval vessels from cold war days
Russian Bear bombers fly over the Atlantic | International | Reuters.  For some reason this seemed to surprise people. What did they think this was leading towards? At least it gives me a chance to put up more pictures of the USS Ranger's encounter with TU-95's in 1979. Plus sometimes they came at you with not with Bears but with Badgers (Tu-16) illustrated by this picture from either from RVAH-7's deployment on the Kitty Hawk the previous year or a previous intercept of the USS Ranger.
The question (if we must dwell on it): is Mr. Putin creating dynamic tension, or creating the appearance of tension for his own purposes
Putin threatens to aim missiles at Ukraine | csmonitor.com? To some extent this is simply more appearance than any military reality. But whoever said that appearance counts for nothing? There is a reality forming behind this, that the world is emerging out of a brief unipolar moment that may have been no more than a misunderstanding of events. The real cold war was full of small but genuinely tense moments such as our (CV 61) encounter with a KA 25 helicopter off of a Kresta II in the Pacific in 1979 (somewhere off Korea If I remember). This KA 25, while its Soviet cruiser, was transiting by us, repeatedly circled the USS Ranger flying along side while the carrier engaged in flight operations. Passing across the bow just as we tried to launch planes necessitating last second cancellations of catapult firings. That Russian helo crew had some balls. The incident lasted about a half hour and easily could have ended quite badly. 
The US Navy has been engaged in recent small provocations of its own. Consider the SM-3 anti missile test. against the NRO's nonfunctioning satellite. Small beer really. The Government/military saw their opening and took it. A short lived press bubble followed
Navy Will Attempt to Down Spy Satellite. It was a test of a sea based system a portion of the oft ridiculed star wars initiative. It should be pointed out it is an Anti Ballistic missile-system
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia not anti-satellite system, although at one time there was a treaty limiting the former. US test took place at half the distance into space as a recent Chinese test, 100 to 150 miles vs 300 miles. The Chinese test then left a debris cloud in orbit which will have to be tracked for the next 50 years. Debris from the US test will burn up within a few weeks.
US must have been very sure of a positive outcome, and comfortable with the inevitability of our arms race moving out off this world into space, in the wake of this demonstration
Missile Defense Future May Turn on Success of Mission to Destroy Satellite - New York Times.
The U S Navy's real provocation, perhaps, is simply having independent minded officers like Centcom commander Admiral Fallon. Via Metafilter
Admiral Fallon | MetaFilter, I became aware of an Esquire profile by Tom Barnett last week The Man Between War and Peace. It seemed frankly a little excessive, but Petraeus attracts a lot of press, with only marginal complaints so why not. Thomas Barnett is the same person who wrote a fairly popular book a few years ago
The Pentagon's new map : war and peace in the twenty-first century and who had an good TED presentation as well soon after
Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace. He has always been reasonably level headed which only accentuates the curious tone of the article and some of its particular passages (which are well illustrated elsewhere see TPM or War and Piece or Foreign Policies Web log.) The reaction to the article came swiftly and harshly beginning with Tom Ricks piece in the Washington Post on Thursday
Commander Rejects Article of Praise - washingtonpost.com. Nothing in all this detracts from a significant point in Barnetts' article when Adm. Fallon observed about his public statements and the regional leaders these statements are directed at: "I don't want to get them too spun up. Washington interprets this as all aimed at them." This administration will always interpret everything as being about them; because their essential stance to the world is narcissist and paranoid.
There have been rumors about the Admiral: that he is in an antagonistic relation with General Petraeus, with the President. That he may not believe war is always the first and best solution to any international resistance. Not by any stretch the same as not believing in the Navy's mission. His observation that Iranian naval threat in the Persian gulf can be swept aside when/if the time comes needs to be set alongside a couple of caveats. The Admiral is with little doubt correct that the over all the formal force capacity of the Iran naval and air-force could substantively reduced with a short campaign. A campaign that might certainly begin with an attack on Iran's nuclear capacity. There are some who think that this may go the other way around - a campaign against sea-war like activity by the revolutionary guard culminating in an attack on Iran's nuclear program. After that while sophisticated guided missiles might prove a lingering threat to shipping, An Iranian campaign of rockets would not. Nor is it likely that a campaign against the US Navy could be built upon explosive laden speed boats. Asymmetric warfare against gulf commerce, in general, is where it falls from there. It remains unclear whether such tactics could be extended to cover a large body of water, how much it would cost the U S to keep things on a even keel. Or whether we might be drawn into a further land war in Iran to prevent this potential chaos. In the formulation that in well-tempered diplomacy everybody must be allowed their turn the Admiral took a dim view of Iran's revolutionary guards posturing which he regarded as being juvenile and out of turn. Adm. Fallon and his staff may have had solid and well thought out ideas on this. He may have had a clear and experienced eye for diplomacy and responsibility that placed him in the first rank of his peers, but that counts for little these days. His sense of his own mind, his concerns, expertise and experience were too much for the fragile egos in Washington. Fallon Resigns as Mideast Military Chief, Gates Says - washingtonpost.com. It wasn't enough in the end to keep him in the job
BBC NEWS | Middle East | US Mid-East commander steps down. He seems to have felt it was desired that he leave the service alltogether Top U.S. Commander in Mideast to Retire Early - New York Times  Admiral William Fallon was at one point many years ago a RA5C Vigilante pilot. So I will put up a Vigi picture to close out on. I always liked this picture and it seems very appropriate now. This appears to be a plane from the squadron I was in, RVAH-7.
The paint scheme is for a USS Forrestal deployment. Which I think (before my time) was in 1975.
I haven't saluted a soul in over twenty-five years - the enduring glory of civilian life, but I'd salute Admiral Fallon if he came by.
[post script: I was going to name this post Uncle Tupolev, but I decided against dragging unecessarily vague Jeff Tweedy references into things when I had a Van decent Morrison pun also available.]
11:53:54 PM  ;;
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