For a second day in a row a pair of Russian nuclear bombers pulled a flyby stunt off the coast of Alaska yesterday.
During the first incident on Monday, U.S Air Force jets were scrambled to intercept the bombers.
Yesterday an AWACS radar jet was sent up to confirm that the pair were the only aircraft in the area.
The incidents follow Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s confab in Moscow in which he declared bluntly that relations with Russia are ‘at a low point’ in recent history.
Meanwhile, President Trump order two additional Naval carriers to the Korean peninsula this week as tensions continue to rise.
Here’s more from Fox News…
For the second consecutive night, Russia flew two long-range bombers off the coast of Alaska on Tuesday, this time coming within 36 miles of the mainland while flying north of the Aleutian Islands, two U.S. officials told Fox News.
The two nuclear-capable Tu-95H bombers were spotted by U.S. military radar at 5 p.m. local time.
Unlike a similar incident Monday night, this time the U.S. Air Force did not scramble any fighter jets.
Instead, it launched a single E-3 Sentry early warning aircraft, known as AWACS, to make sure there were only the two Russian bombers flying near Alaska, and not other aircraft flying underneath the large bombers.
U.S. territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles from shore.
Two Russian bombers flew within 100 miles of Alaska on Monday night.
The Russian bombers took off from an airbase in Petropavlovsk, Russia and returned five hours later to an airbase in Anadyr. Both locations are in eastern Russia, some 1,000 miles away.
Last week in Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said U.S.-Russian relations were at a “low point” during a news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
While Tillerson was in Moscow, a trio of Russian bombers flew near the east coast of Japan, forcing the Japanese military to scramble 14 fighter jets at various times to intercept the bombers. A Russian spy plane traversed Japan’s west coast.
