iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon says Russian aircraft flew low and fast above an American destroyer in the Black Sea last week in an “unsafe and unprofessional” manner and a Russian intelligence vessel has been detected heading north along the eastern coast of the United States.
On Feb. 10, the Navy destroyer USS Porter noted three “unsafe and unprofessional” encounters with Russian military aircraft while in the Black Sea. In each of the incidents Russian aircraft approached the destroyer at an unspecified “low altitude” and some were at “high speed”.
The Russian aircraft did not have their transponders on and did not respond when the destroyer’s crew hailed the planes on radio.
“Such incidents are concerning because they can result in accident or miscalculation,” said Lt. Colonel Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokesman.
Last April Russian fighters repeatedly buzzed an American destroyer in the Baltic Sea, with one pass coming as close as 30 feet to the USS Donald Cook. That incident was one of several close encounters between the U.S. and Russian militaries in 2016, but officials have said recently that such encounters had become infrequent.
At the time of the incident Baldanza said the destroyer was “conducting routine maritime operations in international waters in the Black Sea following the conclusion of Exercise Sea Shield.”
According to Baldanza the first encounter involved a Russian Ilyushin 38, a maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft. The plane “flew in an unsafe and unprofessional manner due to the unusually low altitude” above the USS Porter.
The second incident involved two SU-24 fighters and the third a different Su-24.
Meanwhile American officials are not expressing concern about the presence of a Russian intelligence gathering ship headed northward along the East Coast. The White House deferred comment to the Defense Department on this issue.
According to a U.S. official, the Russian intelligence vessel Viktor Leonov was located 70 miles off the coast of Delaware yesterday in international waters heading in a northerly direction. American territorial waters extend 12 miles out to sea.
The official said the speculation is that the Russian ship is headed near the U.S. Navy’s submarine base at New London, Connecticut.
Russian military monitoring of U.S. sub bases used to happen frequently during the Cold War, but became infrequent after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In 2015, another Russian spy ship made its way south along the East Coast past the sub base at Kings Bay, Georgia, but was apparently mapping underwater communications cables off the Florida coast.
If the Leonov follows previous deployment patterns it will eventually head to south to Cuba.
The official says there is not much concern about the Leonov’s movements or its intelligence gathering capabilities.
The Russian ship was in the mid-Atlantic a month ago and made a port of call in Kingston, Jamaica in early February.
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