Russian Warplanes Buzz U.S. Navy Destroyer, Polish Helicopter

[F-22Raptor]

Russian military warplanes flew close to a U.S. Navy destroyer and Polish military helicopter multiple times over two days this week, according to U.S. officials, a sign of potentially rising tensions despite Moscow’s recent agreement to hold new talks with the Western alliance.

U.S. officials said the Russian military passes, by unarmed Su-24 warplanes and a military helicopter, were unsafe, potentially provocative, and could have caused an accident.

One pass occurred as a Polish military helicopter was about to take off from the deck of the U.S.S. Donald Cook, according to a U.S. official briefed on the incident. The pass-by disrupted the operation, forcing the Cook to hold the helicopter on its deck.

The Cook, a ballistic missile defense destroyer, was patrolling and conducing helicopter exercises with Poland and other U.S. partners in the southwestern Baltic Sea, after a port visit in Poland on Sunday.

U.S. officials said the Cook was operating in international waters.

After the March 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, there were a series of high-profile intercepts of aircraft and passes of warships as tensions rose between Moscow and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In recent months, however, there has been a period of relative calm.

The incidents this week could signal rising tensions once more, as the Western alliance prepares for large-scale exercises in Poland and bolstering its troop presence in Eastern Europe. A NATO summit is also being held in Warsaw in July.

U.S. officials said they were examining video from the Cook along with radar data to determine exactly what happened. But the commanding officer of the Cook told authorities the Russian planes came at a high speed at an aggressive angle of approach.

Navy officials declined to provide details, but acknowledged they were investigating.

“We are assessing the event in light of the commanding officer’s assessment that the interactions were unprofessional and unsafe,” said Adm. Mark Ferguson, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe.

A Russian official acknowledged an encounter occurred, but declined to comment on the circumstances.

A U.S. official said Russian Su-24 passed by multiple times Monday, including the incident with the Polish helicopter. Then on Tuesday a Russian Ka-27 helicopter flew by the Cook, then a Su-24 made multiple low passes over the U.S. warship.

For at least part of the exercises, the Cook was being followed by a Russian frigate and auxiliary ship.

Russian and alliance ambassadors are due to hold a meeting next week, April 20, the first such meeting of the NATO-Russia Council since June 2014.

U.S. officials said the ship hailed the Russian aircraft repeatedly on multiple radio frequencies. One official said the Russians didn’t respond.

Russia has previously intercepted U.S. military aircraft flying in that portion of the Baltic Sea, which isn’t far from the heavily defended Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

U.S. officials are debating whether to lodge an official protest with Moscow in regards to the incident regarding the Cook.

After leaving port in Gdynia, Poland, April 11, the Cook began what officials called “a routine patrol” in the Baltic Sea as well as conducting helicopter flight operations with the Polish military, according to the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet.

In a posting on its website, the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that its Baltic Fleet was doing training exercises with its landing ship Mordovia in the Baltic Sea. As part of the exercises, the hovercraft hit artillery targets at sea and landed at Khmelevka, a city in the Kaliningrad exclave that is less than 62 miles away from Gdynia.

The exercises in the region by both sides shows how the Baltic Sea near Kaliningrad has become a friction point between Russia and the West.

The U.S. has been criticizing the Russian military buildup in Kaliningrad, and officials said the missile systems Russia is putting into the area pose a threat to regional stability.

Likewise, Russian officials have been stepping up criticism of the U.S. and NATO plans to put more forces into Poland and the Baltic States as well as the continuing advances of the alliance’s missile defense system.

The Cook and other U.S. destroyers based in Rota, Spain, are key parts of the missile-defense system. The missile-defense system works by combining the land and sea based radar to cover most of Europe.

While the U.S. has long insisted the missile-defense system is incapable of stopping Russian missiles, Moscow has repeatedly said it is deeply destabilizing.

The USS Donald Cook was previously buzzed by a Russian warplane. In April 2014, about a month after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, a Russian Su-24 made more than a dozen passes near the Cook in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes, Pentagon officials said at the time.

A year ago, in April 2015, the U.S. lodged a protest with Russia over what it called the unsafe interception of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in a similar area of the Baltic Sea. The U.S. RC-135U was flying north of Poland over the Baltic Sea when it was approached by a Russian SU-27 fighter at high speed, according to U.S. officials.

The Pentagon called it unprofessional.

Russians have also in the past, including a June 2015 incident with the USS Ross, criticized what they have called aggressive maneuvers by U.S. warships in the Black Sea, charges the U.S. denied.

Britain and Sweden have also repeatedly scrambled fighters to intercept Russian bombers they said were flying near their territory.

Russian Warplanes Buzz U.S. Navy Destroyer, Polish Helicopter - WSJ

 

[T-Rex]

Nothing will ever happen out of these passes, everybody knows what the purpose is.

 

[Penguin]

USS Donald Cook buzzed again by Russian jets in Baltic - CBS News
videos

Russian fighter jets overflew a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea more than 30 times earlier this week, with one pass at 30 feet from the ship causing a wake in the waters nearby
"These were very low simulated attack profiles, came within 30 feet of the ship, under 100 feet in altitude," said the official, noting that "the reports were that it was creating wake in the water it was so close.”

Russian Fighters Buzz US Navy Destroyer at Close Range in Baltic Sea, US Says - Yahoo

 

[Penguin]

Agreement Between the Government of The United States of America and the Government of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Prevention of Incidents On and Over the High Seas

Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation
Signed at Moscow May 25, 1972
Entered into force May 25, 1972

Narrative

In the late 1960s, there were several incidents between forces of the U.S. Navy and the Soviet Navy. These included planes of the two nations passing near one another, ships bumping one another, and both ships and aircraft making threatening movements against those of the other side. In March 1968 the United States proposed talks on preventing such incidents from becoming more serious. The Soviet Union accepted the invitation in November 1970, and the talks were conducted in two rounds -- October 1, 1971, in Moscow and May 17, 1972, in Washington, D.C. The Agreement was signed by Secretary of the Navy John Warner and Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov during the Moscow summit meeting in 1972.

Specifically, the agreement provides for:

• steps to avoid collision;

• not interfering in the "formations" of the other party;
• avoiding maneuvers in areas of heavy sea traffic;
• requiring surveillance ships to maintain a safe distance from the object of investigation so as to avoid "embarrassing or endangering the ships under surveillance";
• using accepted international signals when ships maneuver near one another;
• not simulating attacks at, launching objects toward, or illuminating the bridges of the other partys ships;
• informing vessels when submarines are exercising near them; and
• requiring aircraft commanders to use the greatest caution and prudence in approaching aircraft and ships of the other party and not permitting simulated attacks against aircraft or ships, performing aerobatics over ships, or dropping hazardous objects near them.

The agreement also provides for: (1) notice three to five days in advance, as a rule, of any projected actions that might "represent a danger to navigation or to aircraft in flight"; (2) information on incidents to be channeled through naval attaches assigned to the respective capitals; and (3) annual meetings to review the implementation of the Agreement.

The protocol to this agreement grew out of the first meeting of the Consultative Committee established by the agreement. Each side recognized that its effectiveness could be enhanced by additional understandings relating to nonmilitary vessels. In the protocol signed in Washington, D.C., on May 22, 1973, each party pledged not to make simulated attacks against the nonmilitary ships of the other.

Like other confidence-building measures, the Incidents at Sea Agreement does not directly affect the size, weaponry, or force structure of the parties. Rather, it serves to enhance mutual knowledge and understanding of military activities; to reduce the possibility of conflict by accident, miscalculation, or the failure of communication; and to increase stability in times of both calm and crisis. In 1983, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman cited the accord as "a good example of functional navy-to-navy process" and credited this area of Soviet-American relations with "getting better rather than worse." In 1985, he observed that the frequency of incidents was "way down from what it was in the 1960s and early 1970s."

http://www.state.gov/t/isn/4791.htm