Members of an Alaska Air National Guard unit at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson detected and tracked five Russian aircraft that flew near Alaska last week.
The Alaska Air National Guard’s 176th Wing identified the Russian aircraft on Oct. 21 when they entered international airspace off Alaska.
A news release issued by the wing Monday says its Air Defense Squadron continued tracking the aircraft as they flew through the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, then relayed that information to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.
A NORAD news release says the Russian aircraft entered the identification zone at about 6 p.m. Thursday and left about 90 minutes later. The news release didn’t say from which direction the aircraft approached Alaska.
The Air National Guard’s news release says the 176th Air Defense Squadron’s surveillance and weapons teams identified the Russian aircraft with help from the JBER-based 611th Air Operations Center. The Russian formation included an AWACS-type reconnaissance and control plane, two Su-35 Flanker jet fighters and two Tu-95 Bear long-range bombers.
It’s unclear whether U.S. fighters were scrambled to escort the Russian aircraft through the identification zone. That’s what the Air Force did more than dozen times last year to intercept more than 60 Russian planes that had entered the identification zone off Alaska and Canada.
Observers say last week’s Russian aircraft incursion off Alaska was the first since January.
Lieutenant General David Krumm, who heads the Alaskan Command, said that was the busiest spate of Russian aircraft incursions since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Lt. Gen. David Krumm’s name. It is David Krumm, not David Crumm.
