The Russians are coming (probably), but don’t freak out
Required reading before the next Russian Bomber flights into NORAD’s Air Defense Identification Zone
On March 9, 2020, American and Canadian fighters scrambled out of Alaskan airbases to intercept a couple of Russian TU-142 aircraft, which is the maritime surveillance version of Russia’s nuclear-weapons capable bombers. The aircraft loitered in NORAD’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for four hours, coming as close as 50 nautical miles from Alaska’s coast, before returning to Russia. Five days later, they repeated the incursion and were again intercepted by American and Canadian fighter aircraft.
Russian warplanes? Off the coast of America? Headlines reporting the incursions did their parts to broadcast the threat. Military.com, a typically measured voice when reporting national security events, wrote “US Fighters Catch Russian Spy Planes Near Alaska for 2nd Time in Days.” The Washington Times stated “Russian aircraft intercepted approaching U.S. airspace.” Fox News had a bit more info with “US, Canadian fighter jets intercept Russian reconnaissance aircraft near Alaska coast, video shows.”
The fun part is reading the tweets. Constrained by text limits, these bold headlines and dramatic pictures of bombers (or things that look like bombers to most people) are shared by many who almost certainly don’t bother to read the attached articles. The retweets and replies spread the headlines but no context. Some of the tweets express shock, others anger, and yet others use it to show how little the Russians respect the president.
For those readers that did bother to click the links, they found that many of the articles had almost no contextual information at all. Some looked to be pretty much just a slightly tweaked copy of NORAD’s official tweets on the event. “Norad intercepts Russian aircraft entering the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone,” declared one outlet, with no information to let the reader know what an “Air Defense Identification Zone is. They did, however, make sure to quote NORAD’s commander when he said “We continue to see repeated Russian military aviation activity in the Arctic and we will defend the U.S. and Canada against these threats emanating from our northern approaches.” Sounds pretty tense.
But while many (perhaps most) did provide some additional information once you got past the rather sensational images of scrambles, intercepts, and bomber descriptions, a key qualifier was almost always buried toward the bottom of these articles: these incursions are routine. Russia, like the United States and pretty much any modern military power, practices for war all the time. And there are times of the year that this activity is more or less expected.
So what is an ADIZ, and how can Russia so brazenly violate it? Well, it’s because the ADIZ is not the same thing as what we think of as “sovereign air space.” The ADIZ extends 200 miles from the U.S. and Canadian coasts, and is simply a designated area that NORAD has identified as part of layered air defense system. NORAD expects that if you’re flying an aircraft in this zone, then you must file a flight plan or follow certain procedures. If an aircraft is detected within this 200 mile zone, you can expect NORAD to identify it one way or another to determine if it’s hostile. However, there is no international law behind it, and rest assured the Russians do not file flight plans, so NORAD launches military aircraft to intercept. Territorial airspace, on the other hand, extends 12 miles off of a national border. If a Bear flew close to that, then there’d be more concern.
Now that we know this is routine, then this next part should not come as a shock: They’re almost certainly coming again, most likely in late April or May (unless the coronavirus pandemic puts a kink in their training cycles). Why? Because with the exception of 2016, they’ve flown into the ADIZ April or May since at least 2015 and probably well beyond that. Check out this rather simple chart:
You’ll notice that for 4 out of the previous 5 years (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019), Russia has flown bomber or maritime surveillance aircraft into Alaska’s ADIZ. Often there are multiple incursions, like the ones earlier this month, over a couple days or a week (part of an exercise, most likely). In 2015, NORAD stated that from 2010–2015, the average number of such incursions was five per year (in 2014, there were 10). As the above chart indicates, the number of such missions appears to be approaching that again after a drop in 2016 and 2017.
The takeaway here is this: when you see the fiery tweet about Russian bombers flying around Alaska, take it for what it is. NORAD will be taking it seriously but in stride. They’re expecting it. But when you decide to share it (because heck, it is interesting), share it with some context.
