USA and Russia keep an eye on each other

NORAD alert! That must have been the words earlier this week in western USA. The North American Aerospace Defense Command picked up two foreign planes entering the international airspace, about 300 kilometers off the coast of Alaska.

Despite the fact that the two airplanes did not enter US airspace, when unidentified military aircraft enter the Air Defense Identification Zone, NORAD scrambles fighter jets to get a visual identification and so it did, Captain Jennifer Stadnyk, NORAD spokesman confirmed.

Two American F-22 Raptor fighter jets and two F-15 Eagle were sent up in the air to investigate and made visual contact with the fleet of Russian bombers. The information was confirmed by the Pentagon. Four Russian TU-95 Bear H long range strategic bombers and a refueling flying tanker were spotted. The Russian fleet left the ADIZ zone and headed west, but a few hours later, two bombers were detected again 80 kilometers off the coast of California.

The Russian bombers were identified by the two F-15 Eagle jets from the continental NORAD region. The Russian aircraft never entered US airspace during the flight. Despite it looked to be a routine training mission, some claim it was some sort of a test taken by the Russian to see how fast US forces react.

NORAD, a joint Canada-US force track and identifies all planes entering and leaving the so called identification zone before they reach sovereign airspace which extends 20 kilometers from Canada's and US', Pacific and Atlantic Ocean coastline.