Breaking News – The Russians Are Coming!

| December 17, 2019

Undated photo of Russian AGI Viktor Leonov.

A Russian Navy ship is currently operating in an unsafe manner off the eastern coast of the USA, ignoring signals from both commercial shipping and the US Navy.

It is offshore from North Carolina. US Navy is keeping an eye on it. The Viktor Leonov has been ignoring warning signals from commercial ships.

There is probably much more to come on this.  Stay tuned.

https://news.usni.org/2019/12/17/coast-guard-russian-surveillance-ship-operating-in-unsafe-manner-of-east-coast

 

Category: Foreign Policy, Navy, Russia

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ChipNASA

Nah, they’re just breathing hard.

AW1Ed

All sorts of interesting things the Rooskis like to spectate off our East Coast. Left Coast too I would imagine, but I’m a LANTFLT type.

Off North Carolina he can snoop on Norfolk NOB and a bunch of Navy/Marine exercise and testing areas.

We would fly out from Jax and fuck with them when they got too obnoxious.

A Proud Infidel®™

Maybe Skipperski have too much Vodka when at helm?

Slow Joe

Nah.

He is following the tracker to Hillary’s server.

The one she wiped with a cloth.

Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH B Woodman

Jam them! Raspberry jam them!
Where’s Lonestar when you want him?

The Other Whitey

Maybe next they’ll comb the desert!

Fyrfighter

Man, we ain’t found shit!

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

Any of you old timers remember the Russian fishing trawlers with all the visible electronics all over the trawler. During op Steel Pike 1 in 1964 off of Seville Spain there was one lurking around the operation and when it was downwind of a tin can, the tin can blew tubes and all you could see was a dark cloud from her stack covering the trawler. I was standing in the hanger bay at the port air craft elevator when one passed us about a hundred yards away with some of their crew members standing at the railings and we started to wave back and forth to each other.

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

I just waved at them Ex and don’t even remember if anyone gave them the bird. Some were most likely teenagers like myself and serving in their Navy. We used to go on Liberty call in Old San Juan PR and once a Russian ship pulled in and they all stuck together in a group and wouldn’t talk to us when we ran into them. I’d love to meet our property managers husband who served on a Russian smoke boat to see what it was like. I also missed meeting Herbert Werner author of Iron Coffins who lived up in Vero Beach, Fl. around 80 miles from me but passed away a few years ago.

AW1Ed

Russian AGIs. They would dog the carrier battle groups all over the Med. Once in a while we would share airspace with one of these.

orion bear

MustangCryppie

Damn! I love me some TU-95s! Beautiful aircraft!

Can’t make out the squadron of the P-3. VP-40?

AW1Ed

VP-45 Pelicans from NAS Jax. Best looking P-3’s in the fleet- when a Pelican showed up at NAS Sig our deployment there was about over.

Also, as I’m sure you know, Mr. Bear would make a P-3 look like it was standing still when he shoveled more coals on the fire.

5th/77th FA

P-3? Cotton pickin’ thing looks like a misassembled C-130 to me.

MustangCryppie

LMAO!

One time when I was on a TRANSPAC from Hawaii to Japan on our mission P-3, I happened to glance down at the Pacific and there was a C-130 wayyyyy below us…and we were passing it like it was standing still.

And as many of us here already know, P-3s are no speed demons, especially the birds packed with mission gear.

AW1Ed

Pipe down doggie. Don’t you have a hole to dig and a can of ham and MF-ers to enjoy?

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66, ARNG 75-77

Ham & lima beans. Bean a long time since I ate C rats.

The Stranger

I already dug the hole with my feral backhoe. We’re just going to drink Yuengling and tell stories.

5th/77th FA

Snak on the left over wings and the pulled pork bbq sammiches. Cookies and ice cream for dessert. I either cooked too much or didn’t invite enough guests for Saturday’s gala.

David

Is a feral backhoe one that has gone wild? Kinda like a front-end loader version of Christine?

The Stranger

Well, that phrase came about a couple of years back and Jonn made one of his famous short, but hilarious, replies that stuck with me. I use the phrase from time to time when someone brings up “The 3 S’s”.🤣. But your description works, too.

MustangCryppie

Ok, VP-45.

Oh, yeah, the Bears had some giddyup. And they had some legs too. I remember seeing a Bear that stayed up well over 24 hours. That is one thing that I was always glad of: no refueling probe on a P-3!

PLE for us meant probably 13.0 if we feathered an engine. And I was still smoking when I was on my two flight tours. THAT sucked.

But, Bears are just so beautiful. One time I was deployed on USS Oldendorf in the Midway BG and the Bears came out to see us. One flew directly over us, very, very low. Spectacular!

One last thing since you flew out of Sig A buddy of mine did a flight tour with VQ-2 and he flew a lot out of Sig. He told me that it was not unusual to hear, when they were on final into Sig, the ATCs say, “Ona a course, ona aglide apath. No toucha nuthin’!” He loved it!

11B-Mailclerk

The Tu-95 “Bear” uses a prop that is intentionally supersonic at upper power settings. And each prop is actually a pair of counter-rotating props. All smashing through the shattered atmosphere above Mach 1.

They are -insanely- loud.

The crews are the legendary deaf folks of flight ops. The ground crews envy Artillerymen’s ears.

The Other Whitey

I’ll agree that the Bear is impressive looking, but pretty? Not really. The Russian design aesthetic for almost all of their aircraft is just ugly as shit. The only Russian aircraft I can think of that bucks this trend is the Mi-6 Hook. Do any of those still fly? I know a bunch are sitting in the Chernobyl boneyards waiting out the half-life of irradiated graphite…

Besides, the part where everyone who rides in a Bear goes deaf is kind of a deal-breaker for me.

MustangCryppie

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The Other Whitey

Fair enough. Some people swear Jennifer Anniston is a 10. Personally, I think she’s a 7 that cleans up to about a 7.6. Far from ugly, but there are plenty of hotter females out there.

In all fairness, I don’t think we’ve built a plane that’s pretty to look at since the F-86.

Mick

F-8 Crusader.

“The last of the Gunfighters.”

5th/77th FA

Mick, are you talking about TC and the Top Gun – fighters? Asking for a friend.

Mick

— sigh —

You just had to bring it up, didn’t you.

AW1Ed

Poetrooper

But then, sometimes beauty is in the behind of the beheld…

The Other Whitey
SFC D

They’re searching for the Red October.

AW1Ed

“Give me a ping Vasili, one ping only please.”

Read the book cover-to-cover while on the Ready Alert on NAS Sigonella. Stole it from my roomie who stole it from his NAV/COM.

The movie almost didn’t insult me, which from me is high praise indeed.

MustangCryppie

I always laugh when the skipper tells Jonesy, “Go take a Hollywood, Jonesy!” after a particularly good sonar catch.

A lot of times I never bothered with a shower. 5 minutes after you were done, you felt greasy all over again.

Twist

I didn’t read that one, but I read “Red Storm Rising” while I was at the Basic Mountaineer Course at Black Rapids, Alaska. I wish that they would make a movie out of that book.

The Other Whitey

I read somewhere that the Navy let Scott Glenn spend a week on a fast-attack boat to prepare for the role of Captain Mancuso, and said boat’s captain had him take the conn a couple of times. And scenes aboard Enterprise and Reuben James (including James Earl Jones’s “I was never here”) were filmed on the actual ships.

NHSparky

Still haven’t seen a submarine movie worth a shit outside Das Boot or Down Periscope.

MustangCryppie

I was on a boat run on which the COB made the crew watch Das Boot. It played day after day after day…

Anyway, during my mando viewing of the movie, there is a scene when the sub is leaving La Rochelle and the skipper, standing in the sail, said, “I missed the sea!”

Immediate boos and various objects thrown at the screen.

Still a great movie, though. Just not for bubbleheads who’ve been underway for quite a while.

If I could go back in time and attend one party, it would be the one they had the night before they shipped out! Whoo HOO!

MustangCryppie

Some things NEVER change. My very first ship deployment in the Navy way back in 1982 was to shadow a Russian spy ship off the coast of Washington State. The ship was waiting for a boomer to come out of Bangor. Finally, a sub did exit the Strait of Juan de Fuca and that Russian hit the good foot to get close to the sub and get acoustic signatures etc. That ship was SCREAMING at full speed towards the SSBN Well, the destroyer I was on also kicked it in the ass and to stop the Russian ship we cut across their bow to slow them down. We were REAL close and the Russians went bat shit! They got on channel 16 and well, let us have it verbally. Yawn! Pretty sure the Russian government demarched the incident. Another BIG yawn! However, the best event took place toward the end of the deployment. I was working in the sonar shack and the skipper called me to the bridge and ordered me to “send meaningless manual morse code groups into the water” using the sonar. Aye, Captain! We won’t go into why he wanted me to do that. Suffice it to say it was pretty damn important. Anyway, I headed back to the sonar shack with my mission to “send meaningless manual morse code groups into the water”… …except that I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I started sending code groups which were extremely obscene acts perpetrated by Leonid Brezhnev, his wife, daughter, and dog IIRC. VERY obscene. The only other guy in the shack with me was the LPO who also knew Morse code. He just sat there with a thin smile on his face. Never even looked at me. Plausible deniability of some sort I guess. All of a sudden, the 1MC rang out, “Snoopy team to the bridge!” Hmmm. Since I was the only intel type still on the ship, they must have meant me. I rushed up to the bridge and as I entered I saw a guy on the main deck of the Rooskie ship,… Read more »

AW1Ed

Daily “Show the Flag” flight in the Med, beautiful summer day, sea state zip point shit. Did the dawn Hamm Check and went about the rest of the flight, checking shipping. What do we see?
Radar flew us into IRDS and then visual range and there, DIW, was a surfaced Tango* SS- at swim call!

Nekked Rooskis paddling all around and jumping off the boat. I had the Agiflight 70mm camera primed an ready, got some great shots.

Fun time over, the Russian sailors mounted up as the sub started its motors. Just to rub a little salt in, we dropped a nice tight passive/active sonobuoy pattern on him, just to let him know we cared.

*Russian Diesel-Electric submarine. The Tango class was a big improvement over the older Foxtrot diesels, and catching one was pretty rare.

MustangCryppie

Fucking AWESOME!

The Other Whitey

That’s some funny shit right there! Even funnier that one of the GCBs took it personally.

MustangCryppie

🙂

One of my proudest moments!

Anonymous

July 1970, off Cape Canaveral… the more things change, the more they stay the same:

Bim

Sounds like Putin wants us to tremble at the might of the -Soviet- um, Russian, military might.

Sigh. OK Vlad, we’re all paying attention to you now. You can stop your tantrum.

Hack Stone

They are just in the neighborhood to drop off another check for The Clinton Global Initiative.

MCPO USN

Hillary threatened Putin with Arkancide if the check was late. She wants to be able to enjoy the money before full dementia sets in. And since Epstein is “unavailable”, Bill has to go back to paying the high priced hookers double so they won’t talk.

GDContractor

Meanwhile, I heard there was a good weenie roast on their flattop.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/12/13/fire-sweeps-russias-only-aircraft-carrier/

The Other Whitey

You get the feeling that God doesn’t want the Russians to have an aircraft carrier?

HMCS(FMF) ret

Peter the Great (Father of the Russian Navy) is crying somewhere…

The Other Whitey

If memory serves, Pyotr Velikiy generally considered himself to be surrounded by idiots. He may have been on to something.

The Stranger

I’m of the opinion that the last time the Russian Navy was worth a damn was when Ivan Pavel was an admiral (John Paul Jones to us Americans)😂

5th/77th FA

The Russians have been coming since 1946. We shoulda listened to Patton in 1945. We’ve spent a gazzillion trillion USD playing footsies with them.

To be honest, I am more concerned about our domestic enemies than I am our foreign enemies.

A group of us may and/or may not have been doing a history program at an early to mid 1800s fort near the coast about 20+ years ago. Several pounds of black powder somehow may and/or may not have been loaded into a 32 pounder coastal gun with a wadding of steel wool. There is a possibility that the fuze in said gun may and/or may not have self ignited causing said power to propel said steel wool wadding to launch itself into the side of one of the FIRST Russian freighters that was to make a port of call at the port city up river from the fort. All we know is the incoming choppers and sirens from the local popo woke us from a deep sleep. Alcohol may and/or may not been involved.

Like SGT Schultz, I know nothing.

MustangCryppie

Oh! Oh! OH!

A story like that is the STUFF OF LEGENDS! I bow to you, sir!

A Proud Infidel®™

That didn’t happen someplace in Old Gawgy, did it?

5th/77th FA

I don’t know Jack or his defecation and/or shine-ola.

OWB

Yep. Them’s some A # 1 sea stories, ’em are. Yep. Too bad nuttin’ like that there ever happens in USAF. Just too bad.

Well, except for this one time.

Uhhhh. Nope. Still can’t tell that one.

vetfromhell

We had an AGI come close to us on the Vinson in the Pacific. The Captain got on the horn and told us to wave bye bye. Then he fit full speed for two days. Good times.

Green Thumb

They probably got lost on their way to a refit at All-Points Logistics in Merritt Island, FL.

These days, Phildo and the boys are soliciting contracts from across the board…..

An dome of the folks ain’t the brightest.

Green Thumb

Word also has it that the Russian’s are having some recruitment and associated issues….

Especially with respect to retention.

Just think if they can attend a foreign course at/ taught by All-Points Logistics how their chances of promotion increase.

They will get a Rubber Phallus with a Phildo Star over their left pocket.

A Proud Infidel®™

Maybe Hack Stone’s outfit might be looking to sell outdated Red Hat Software to the Russkies as well?

JTB

Probably needs a jump start….

USMC Steve

I wonder if we asked them nicely, if the French would be willing to “Rainbow Warrior” that Russky ship for us?

GDContractor

I have a Russian helicopter crew story, told to me by a former Russian helicopter pilot. I’ll save it for this week’s open thread.

Poetrooper

We’re gonna have to change the name of this site to “This Ain’t Homeport…”