It appears that prior to Obama’s visit to Canada that the Russians decided to see whose was bigger.
From CNN:
“At no time did Russian planes enter Canadian air space, but within 24 hours of the president’s visit here … we did scramble F-18 fighter planes from NORAD in Canada command,” Peter MacKay said in a news conference in Ottawa.
The Russian planes were in international waters, about 118 miles (190 kilometers) northeast of Tuktoyuktuk, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
“It was a routine flight over international airspace,” Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman at the Russian Embassy in Washington, told CBC news.
That’s right Putin. Try that again and we’ll send the Sunnyvale crew. Mind you they might get, um, lost shall we say, along the way. Maybe we best stick to our own respective yards. Capiche?
On a more serious note this is a typical routine that the Russians and Americans used in the cold war. The Russians know that the Cold War ended, right?