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By Laura Smith-
Kinzinger said he believes Putin is seeking to test the West's will with such sorties, as
he figures out how far he can push before provoking a response.
"That's why it's important for us to stand up now and make it very clear that we're not
going to be bullied," he said.
U.S.-Russia military tit for tat raises fears of greater conflict
What are the risks?
The Russian aircraft are in international airspace, where they are perfectly entitled to
be flying, de Larrinaga said. But there are certain risks involved.
For one, there have been complaints that the Russian aircraft don't turn on their
transponders -- a bone of contention particularly over Europe, where airspace is more
congested, since it raises the risk of a potential collision with civilian air traffic.
There's also a danger of collision with the military aircraft sent to intercept the
Russians.
"Any time you have military aircraft of two different nations coming into close proximity
to each other when they are not communicating, it does raise the prospects of
accidents happening," de Larrinaga said.
Both the Russians and other nations sending intercepting aircraft have previously
complained of the other side coming dangerously close, he said.
And while the pilots are highly skilled, making a collision unlikely, it can happen.
In 2001, a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft and a Chinese fighter collided during just
such an interception over Hainan Island in the South China Sea. While the damaged
U.S. plane managed to make an emergency landing, the Chinese aircraft crashed and
its pilot was killed. The Chinese blamed the United States, and the stranded U.S. crew
wasn't allowed to leave for more than a week.
Also, although vast sums of money are being spent on the Russian military, it still lags
behind Western powers in terms of capability and equipment, de Larrinaga said. The
Russian air force is currently pushing its aircraft -- many of them aging -- very hard,
with the result that it has lost quite a few lately, he said, including a Tu-95 that crashed
recently in Russia.
Kinzinger warns of the broader risk that an unpredictable Russia "could take one
wrong move" -- perhaps by calculating it can move into Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania
without provoking a NATO response -- "and that can lead to, you know, at best, a
regional war, but potentially a world war scenario, as NATO is forced to defend its own
territory."
A NORAD spokesman declined to describe the July Fourth incident as a threat but
said it was "potentially destabilizing," because it was unannounced and the bombers in
question are nuclear-capable.
In neither case did the Russian planes enter U.S. airspace, which extends 12 nautical
miles from American coastlines, officials said. The U.S. fighters tracked them until they
turned around.
The encounter roughly 40 miles off California's central coast was more unusual as
Russian planes don't often venture that far south, a U.S. military official told CNN a
few days afterward.
While the intercepts were routine from a military point of view, the U.S. official said, the
Pentagon sees them as Putin "sending a message" to the United States on
Independence Day.
The Russian aircraft would have been detected and tracked probably even while still
over Russian airspace, de Larrinaga said, so the U.S. military would have been well
on top of their arrival -- and interception -- near U.S. airspace.
"There shouldn't have been a military risk from that point of view," he said, "although
there is also a certain element of military discomfort that you might have a nucleararmed bomber flying off your airspace."
July Fourth.
November: NATO jets scrambled more than 400 times in 2014 for Russian intercepts
How are the United States and Russia getting along right now?
There's no question that tensions are as high as at any time since the end of Cold
War.
"Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security," Gen. Joseph Dunford
told the Senate Armed Services committee this month during his confirmation
hearing to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United
States, I would have to point to Russia," Dunford said. "And if you look at their
behavior, it's nothing short of alarming."
In general, Russian military activity has increased since March 2014, when Western
countries objected to its annexation of the Ukraine's Crimea region as well as to
Russia's alleged support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
In May, for example, Russia annoyed Western officials by deploying 12,000 troops and
numerous aircraft and weapons in a surprise military exercise in the country's
northwest, a show of strength that appeared to be a response to a long-planned -- and
long-announced -- European military exercise led by Norway.
And in June, Putin announced the addition of 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles to
Russia's nuclear arsenal.
CNN's Brian Todd, Jethro Mullen and Don Melvin contributed to this report.
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