Russian overflight of US warship 'benign': US Navy chief

[David]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The chief of the US Navy said Tuesday an overflight of a US aircraft carrier by a Russian bomber off Japan was "benign" and unprovocative, adding that US crew were not called to combat stations.

Admiral Gary Roughead said he had not asked Moscow for an explanation, but offered one of his own: the Russian military is trying to re-emerge as a global force.

"But I did not consider it to be provocative," he said of Saturday's overflight of the USS Nimitz in the western Pacific.

"And, again, the way that our forces responded, our commanders responded, the performance of our systems was exactly what we expected," he added.

One of the bombers overflew the Nimitz at an altitude of 2,000 feet (600 meters), he told reporters at the Pentagon.

Roughead acknowledged that even during the Cold War US forces rarely overflew Russian warships.

But he said the flight of two TU-95 Bear bombers was detected early and alert aircraft were launched in a timely manner.

"The fact that we had such early detection, that we were able to launch our alerts in a very timely way, and when our airplanes joined up on the bombers, it was a very benign flight that came through, and we just latched onto them and followed them on in," he said.

"You know, it's not prudent to fly over an aircraft carrier," he said at another point. "But our situational awareness is such that, as I said, we had good detection, followed them in, and, in my mind, it's not something to go to general quarters over."

Roughead said the incident did not cause the Nimitz to go to general quarters -- a call for a ship's crew to combat stations.

US defense officials said four F-18 fighters intercepted the Russian bombers and escorted them until they had left the area.

Two other TU-95 bombers were intercepted earlier the same day by Japanese F-15 fighters.

Japan issued what it said was a strong protest with Moscow, which denied that its aircraft had ventured into Japanese airspace.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates met the day after the Nimitz incident with Russian Deputy Premier Sergei Ivanov in Munich, Germany, but did not raise it in their talks, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

"Any expressions of concern will probably be carried out through military-to-military quote 'diplomatic channels,'" State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

But the State Department did not "at this point intend to do anything on behalf of the Department of Defense," McCormack said.

The Russians have decided to resume "some of their long-range aviation flights" using material left over from the Cold War and were keeping "them in good, working order," he said

"But beyond that, I don't think we view it as a particular threat. It is something that we watch, it is something that we watch closely," he said.

Some members of Congress raised concerns about the incident, however, at a hearing with senior Pentagon officials.

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson said it "sounds pretty provocative to me ... that they would be flying over one of our aircraft carrier battle groups and specifically if it were the aircraft carrier itself."

Republican Senator Pete Domenici said Russia was using a flood of oil revenues to re-equip its military forces and re-establish military laboratories.

"And they're pretty modern in terms of what they're building, compared to what we thought over the last decade. And nobody ought to be fooled. They're not built just to be parked up there in the ice lands," he said.

General James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the overflight was unusual, "but not significant in that the practice was done safely, professionally and they were escorted out of the area."

"Now what we're concerned about is, what are the indications of this return to a Cold War mindset -- what are the implications of that activity and how do we best address that?

"We're just trying to now go back and look what message was intended by this overflight," he said.