Thursday, April 24, 2014

TU-95: one of the noisiest nuclear capable bombers in the planet

The Tupolev Tu-95 (Bear Bomber) is essentially a copy of the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress that flew in WWII, and it became the Soviet Union's first intercontinental bomber in 1956. Because of its distinctively swept-back wings and four turbo-fan engines that each drive two contra-rotating propellers, it is one of the noisiest military aircraft on the planet. By sending the nuclear-capable bombers into Dutch airspace, the Russians must have wanted their intrusion to be visible on every NATO radar site in the region to generate the greatest possible amount of Dutch and European media awareness.
end partial quote from:

Dutch Fighters Scrambled to Intercept Russian Bombers ...

So, basically Russia is saying to Holland, "If you help send NATO jet fighters we might have a little nuclear surprise for you."

During the Cold War this was all talk (unless someone nuts had his or her hand on the nuclear button for the Soviet Union. Now, we don't know what this is because it took us almost 50 years to get what we had before and then the Soviet Union collapsed. Now, Putin is doing the same thing that STalin and Hitler did without any useful agreements with teeth in place. So, I would say what is going on now is about 10 to 100 times as dangerous as anything that happened in the Cold War with the exception of "The Cuban Missile Crisis" in 1962.

 

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