As part of Russia’s OCEAN 2024 exercise, two patrol aircraft were recently detected by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) operating in Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The aforementioned exercise began last week with the participation of the Russian Air Force and Navy, as well as the presence of military units from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China in the Pacific region.
The exercises under the title OCEAN 2024 are part of a series of Russian naval and submarine maneuvers in different parts of Europe and the Pacific. It involves a considerable number of naval, aerial, and surface assets from the Baltic, Northern, and Pacific Fleets of the Russian Navy.
In a statement, NORAD reported that on September 14, Il-38 and Tu-142MK patrol aircraft were monitored in the ADIZ, where they remained in international airspace but did not enter the sovereign airspace of the United States or Canada. As indicated in previous episodes, “it is important to highlight that the ADIZ should not be confused with sovereign airspace. As of today, it can be understood as a zone unilaterally declared by any country with the aim of identifying, locating, and controlling air traffic, whether civil or military, in a specific region. Although widely used by various countries around the world, ADIZs are currently not governed or defined by any international treaty or convention.”
In the case of the Tu-142MK patrol and anti-submarine warfare aircraft, along with Su-30SM fighters from the Russian Naval Aviation, they were also intercepted on September 13 by Eurofighter jets from the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) in the Baltic region. These incidents add to others recorded periodically during previous months, which feature Russian and German military aircraft as the protagonists in the region, when flights are conducted without an announced flight plan and with transponders turned off, triggering QRA interception protocols.
Likewise, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces reported on September 12 about patrol flights in southern Japan, in the Ryūkyū Islands archipelago, through the Tsushima, Miyako, and Sōya Straits. According to released maps, the flights included a circumnavigation of the Japanese archipelago.
Returning to the incident recorded in the Alaska ADIZ, although NORAD indicated that this is not the first time such flights have been recorded, the focus is on the fact that, as warned by senior U.S. Air Force (USAF) officials, the activity of Russian long-range patrol aircraft could intensify. The situation becomes more significant when these missions involve the participation of assets and personnel from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as occurred in late July when a combined patrol of Tu-95MS bombers from the Russian Aerospace Forces and H-6K bombers from the PLA Air Force was detected. This led to a combined response from U.S. F-16 and F-35A fighters, which, along with Canadian CF-18s, intercepted the aircraft in international airspace.
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