Hours before Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, two Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam, an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States. This is the latest sign of the growing strategic assertiveness of Moscow towards the United States.
The Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers were equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The bombers were followed closely by U.S. jets.
The Washington Free Beacon reports,
Air Force Capt. Kim Bender, a spokeswoman for the Pacific Air Force in Hawaii, confirmed the incident to the Washington Free Beacon and said Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, “scrambled and responded to the aircraft.”
“The Tu-95s were intercepted and left the area in a northbound direction. No further actions occurred,” she said. Bender said no other details would be released “for operational security reasons.”
The bomber incident was considered highly unusual. Russian strategic bombers are not known to have conducted such operations in the past into the south Pacific from bomber bases in the Russian Far East, which is thousands of miles away and over water.
“Every day brings new evidence that Obama’s ideological obsession with dismantling our nuclear deterrent is dangerous,” said former United Nations ambassador and former State Department internationals security undersecretary John Bolton. “Our national security is in danger of slipping off the national agenda even as the threats grow.”
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