USA – United States and Canadian fighter jets intercepted four Russian and Chinese bombers flying in international airspace near Alaska on Wednesday, officials said.

This marked the first time that Chinese military aircraft had been intercepted in that area, according to U.S. official, and the first time that Russian and Chinese bombers had flown together near Alaska. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said in a statement that it had “detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC [Peoples Republic of China] H-6 military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on July 24, 2024.”

NORAD said that American and Canadian fighter jets conducted the intercept and noted that the Russian and Chinese remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian airspace. “This is the first time we’ve seen these two countries fly together like that, they didn’t enter our airspace” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Thursday at a Pentagon news conference.

“They’re testing us and that’s no surprise to any of us,” adding that the United States had “closely monitored these aircraft, tracked the aircraft, intercepted the aircraft, and which demonstrates that our you know, our forces are at the ready all the time, and we have very good surveillance capabilities.”

“We will see challenges from adversaries throughout and I don’t think that this particular point in time, is any different,” Austin said when asked why he thought Russia and China would undertake such a mission at this time. “I think we’ll continue to see this going forward. It’s just a nature of who they are and what they do,” he added.

U.S. territorial airspace and waters extend at a distance of 12 nautical miles from the shoreline, but the ADIZ is a zone that stretches out 150 miles from the U.S. coastline, where the U.S. requires aircraft to identify themselves. It is not unusual for Russian bombers flying through the ADIZ to be intercepted, as was the case in February and March.(abcnews)…[+]