Air traffic

Last year I reported on the vicissitudes of national military budgets, which resulted in several first-world nations claiming they were unable to find the money to maintain 24x7 readiness for dealing with violations of their air space.

I suggested that Baltic countries in particular might want to rethink that situation, because living next door to Vladimir Putin, and being former entities of both the Russian and Soviet empires, would sure as hell make me uneasy.

Since then, it’s come to my attention that there have been incidents involving Russian aircraft flying into Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, near-Canada (yeah, not in their air space, but pretending to launch Cruise missiles on the US), the Netherlands, Alaska (yeah, I know: you can see Russia from there; I understand how those pilots might have got confused), and near-UK.

When I say “near-“ I mean “close enough for the countries involved to actually launch fighter intercepts. This includes the one earlier this month off of the coast of Cornwall.

There have also been other incidents where Russian aircraft buzzed US and Canadian naval vessels in the Black Sea. Although I can understand the attraction—I mean, if the Ruskies were engaging in naval exercises off the Gulf Coast, wouldn’t the Top Guns from Pensacola be itching to play some chicken?

Shoot—every redneck on the coast from Corpus Christi to Cape Coral with a huntin’ rifle, a six-pack and a bass boat would be powering up for a swipe at them. So, yeah.

At any rate, earlier this week Lithuania announced that it is reintroducing a limited form of military conscription; for years they’ve had a volunteer, professional army. So far neither Estonia nor Latvia appears to be following suit. I hope they’re not counting on the Litvaks to provide full protection.

And I hope they’re all gassing up their fighter jets and staffing their radar stations, 24x7.