An airport

For the first time, on July 24, 2024, a group of strategic bombers from Russia and China conducted a five-hour patrol off the Pacific coast of the United States according to a fundamentally new scheme . “Two Russian Tu-95MS Mechka and two Chinese Xian H-6s, which are approved versions of the Soviet Tu-16, long decommissioned in Russia, took part in this impressive and impressive display of combat training ,” he said. Russian military expert Sergey Ishenko in a study published by Svpressa.

During the flight, Russian Su-30SM and Su-35S fighters accompanied Chinese and Russian strategic bombers as a precaution. North of the Aleutian Islands, US Air Force F-16s and F-35s and Canadian CF-18s were immediately scrambled from Elmendorf-Richardson Air Force Base in Alaska to intercept Russian and Chinese bombers .

How many precision cruise missiles were within about 200 miles of US territory that day? Each Russian Mechka has eight X-101s or X-102s with conventional or nuclear warheads (with a range of 5,000 to 10,000 km), Sergey Ishenko estimates.

And the pair of Xian H-6 bombers of the Chinese Air Force, depending on the change of day, can carry under their wings from eight to twelve CJ-20 (“Changjian-20”, firing range up to 2000 km) or missiles of the -anti-ship YJ-21 (“Yingzi-21”, firing range up to 1500 km).

“Thus, almost the Pacific coast of the United States and part of its continent in the event of the worst situation in the world can immediately be in the field of view of Russian and Chinese pilots. It was too direct a warning to Washington,” the military analyst said.

The joint Russian-Chinese fighter jet took place just three days after two US B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers made their first ever deployment to Romania, just 400 kilometers from Crimea.

“Basically, the States can expect something similar from us. Long-term patrols of the Arctic zone by Russian long-range aircraft have been carried out for a long time and regularly. But what came as a complete surprise to the Pentagon was that Chinese strategic bombers were involved in such an operation,” Ishenko believes.

Before that, when they faced the US, they had never climbed to such a high latitude. Precisely because the maximum flight distance of the Xian H-6 of 6,000 km does not allow this to be done without complex and expensive refueling in the air. Where did those planes come from on July 24 near Alaska and the Aleutian Islands?

The University of Tokyo’s Advanced Science and Technology Research Center analyzed satellite images and found that Chinese planes took off from Anadyr Airport in Chukotka in eastern Russia at the same time as the Russian bombers.

“This was unprecedented. After all, Anadyr Airport is the most important facility of the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation. Too many of the most important Russian military secrets are of a sensitive nature. Starting from specialized weapons and fuel storage facilities to flight control, communication and identification systems, and finally, to the organization of air defense and electronic warfare systems. Therefore, it is only natural that we have not allowed foreigners in such air bases until now. Besides, they were not allowed to leave there with their own fighter planes,” explained Ishenko.

For a better understanding of the situation, he highlighted the importance of Anadyr airport. “Built by titanic efforts across the Arctic Circle during the Soviet era and disappearing after 1991, it was recently given new life, in 2018, with the arrival of two missile carriers Russia’s strategic supersonic Tu-160 White Swan landed for the first time. period after a major reform that lasted 15 years. For this purpose, the teams made a long journey of 7,000 kilometers from the main airport of the long-range aircraft of the Russian Federation “Engels” in the Volga region. It was a great achievement by the Russian pilots who activated the US air defense system. Because it will reduce the flight time to hundreds of the most important facilities in the United States (not only in Alaska) to the point that our missiles and air bombs could go over heads Americans almost out of nowhere. Therefore, Anadyr became the perfect airport for long-range missile carriers of the Russian Air Force,” explained the military analyst.

A joint flight off the coast of the US by Russian and Chinese aircraft means that the armed forces of both countries have indeed begun to work out the capabilities of their strategic aircraft without much media noise, said Ishenko.

In August 2023, US radars registered the largest foreign fleetconsisting of 11 warships of the Russian and Chinese ships, to US territorial waters off the coast of Alaska. Never in the history of the relations between these countries had such a number of ships been seen approaching so closely, reported Wall Street Journal.