In the afternoon of September 4th the U.S. Air Force dispatched three of its nuclear capable B-52H heavy bombers for a flight over the Black Sea, where they approached the disputed but currently Russian held peninsula of Crimea. The Russian military launched eight fighter jets to intercept a fleet of American bombers, all of them high end heavyweight combat jets including four Su-27 and four Su-30 platforms. The Su-27 Flanker is the most widely used fighter in the Russian military, and was designed for high end air superiority missions.

The platform first entered service in 1985, and although it is no longer in production more advanced derivatives of the Flanker design including the Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35 are currently being manufactured to modernise the Russian fleet. The Su-30 is an advanced ‘4+ generation’ derivative of the Flanker which integrates a range of new features such as thrust vectoring engines and a new sensor suite. The newer fighter is more versatile and better suited to air to ground and anti shipping missions than the original.

The incident with the B-52 bombers marks the latest of an unusually high number of interceptions of NATO military aircraft by Russian fighters and interceptors over the past month. According to Russian state media reports, several American and British intelligence gathering aircraft and ships were present both over Ukrainian airspace and in the Black Sea – which was taken as an indication that the B-52s were likely testing Russia’s air defences over Crimea.

Crimea is today one of the most heavily fortified territories in Russia, deploying multiple units of heavyweight fighter jets, Iskander ballistic missiles, Bastion anti shipping systems and S-400 air defences batteries among other high end assets. The historically Russian peninsula was absorbed into the Russian Federation in 2014, after the Western Bloc supported the overthrow of the government of neighbouring Ukraine and the installation of a pro-Western regime in Kiev. Crimea’s status remains hotly disputed today, and relations between Russia and NATO have been particularly tense ever since.