When Russia and China fly a formation of bombers into the US Air Defense Identification Zone, America takes notice. On July 25, that’s exactly what happened off the Alaskan coast, and NORAD scrambled its fighters to shadow the intruders. Russian planes close to Alaska aren’t rare, but joint formations with the Chinese that penetrate that space certainly are.
Russian and Chinese Bombers Carry Out Joint Flight Operations
Moscow and Beijing have conducted numerous maritime exercises and warlike training in the Indo-Pacific region and close to Alaska in the Bearing Sea. As Liberty Nation News reported:
“The US Navy responded in force when China and Russia expanded their maritime exercise operation from the Sea of Japan to sovereign waters off Alaska. In an unprecedented display of coordinated sea power, the Sino-Russian flotilla transited the La Perouse Strait from exercise operations off the coast of Japan into the Sea of Okhotsk, northwest of the Bering Sea between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands chain.”
With its naval and air bases near the Arctic region, Russia routinely flies routes through the Bearing Sea and in the far North, and such military flights will likely transit close to the US ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone). What makes this particular Sino-Russian military formation dissimilar to those that have gone before is the presence of a Chinese long-range bomber and the timing.
A NORAD post on X described the intercept operation, explaining: "NORAD Command employed a layered defense network of fighter aircraft, satellites, and ground-based and airborne radars in seamless interoperability to detect, track, and intercept two Russian TU-95 [Bear] and two PRC [People's Republic of China] H-6 strategic bombers operating in the Alaska ADIZ on July 24, 2024." NORAD reported it did not consider the aircraft a threat.
Photographs accompanying the X post show the US fighter aircraft as F-16s and F-35As. Other reports of the US intercepting the Russian and Chinese bombers said that the Canadian fighters were CF-18 Hornets, Canada's version of the US Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18. A photo of the PRC H-6 has also been posted. An unusual scene taken from an open-source intelligence X posting portrays actual video footage released by the Russian Ministry of Defense taken from inside the Russian TU-95 of the intercept. It shows the two F-16s, the F-35, and two CF-18s flying in close formation with the Russian bomber. One of the CF-18s matched the reduced speed of the TU-95 is in slow flight with its tail hook down and full flaps.
A release by China's official news service, Xinhua, said, "It was the eighth strategic aerial patrol conducted by the two militaries since 2019, according to Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense." However, it was the first time Chinese bombers had penetrated the Alaskan ADIZ. The PRC’s motivation would be to gain as much information about the US response times to ADIZ incursions as well as what type of interceptor the US and Canada would use. The fact that it was a combined Russia-China exercise would indicate that not only would the two countries working in coordination want as much information as possible about how the NORAD responds in such cases but also how best to integrate the capabilities of the two air forces working against the US and Canadian fighters.
Timing Suspicious but US Defenses Routinely Tested
The timing of the exercise and the testing of the ADIZ response is a little suspicious. It is not a secret President Biden has not been on his game recently, and the announcement of his not seeking a second term and Vice President Kamala Harris replacing him at the top of the ticket could leave the impression that the US military is leaderless. Russia and China might think this is a perfect time to test America’s military capability in the Arctic. In a press conference Thursday (July 25), Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attempted to dispel the notion there was significance in the timing tied to Biden's announcement not to run. "…[A]s to whether or not our adversaries are testing us at this particular time. They're always testing us, and that's no surprise to any of us. We see activity in the North on a number of occasions and we are always at the ready," Austin told Fox News.
In the future, the US military can anticipate seeing more combined Sino-Russian military maneuvers in the Indo-Pacific and wherever the two nations want to exert influence by having a presence. However, if more joint exercises with air operations close to the US are in the Moscow-Beijing playbook, the surveillance works both ways. We learn as much about their combined air tactics and procedures as they learn about ours.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.
