NORAD Conducts ‘Routine’ Defense Exercise Off West Pacific Coast

US F-22 stealth jets intercepted four Russian bombers and two Russian Su-35 fighter jets off the coast of Alaska, according to a statement from North American Aerospace Defense Command,on May 20, 2019. Sr Master Sgt ThomasMenegiun/DOD

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) on Wednesday announced it is conducting a planned “live-fly air defense exercise” off the coast of Washington state and British Columbia.

The Colorado-based joint military agency said the exercise will include American and Canadian fighter jets operating at a high altitude.

Despite the timing of the move, NORAD maintained this is a routine exercise that has nothing to do with any of the recent incidents, such as four Russian aircraft on Monday flying into an air defense buffer zone near Alaska, or three unidentified airborne devices being spotted and shot down, with the latest on Sunday over Lake Huron.

“This exercise is in no way related to recent NORAD and U.S. Northern Command operations associated with airborne objects over North America during the last two weeks,” said NORAD.

“To test responses, systems and equipment, NORAD routinely conducts air defense exercises using a variety of scenarios, including airspace restriction violations, hijackings and responding to unknown aircraft.”

A Russian formation of four aircraft, including a Tu-95H strategic bomber and a Su-35 fighter, flew into the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone on Monday, prompting NORAD to dispatch two F-16 fighters to intercept them. They were supported by two F-35A fighters, an E-3 airborne warning and control system, and a KC-135 tanker.

The Russian activity was “routine,” NORAD said in a release, noting that encounters like this “occur regularly” and are not seen as a threat or proactive.

“Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” the release stated. “NORAD had anticipated this Russian activity and, as a result of our planning, was prepared to intercept it.”

Lawmakers Call for More Transparency

Lawmakers have expressed frustration with questions left unanswered about those floating objects of mysterious origins, which managed to bypass a sophisticated billion-dollar air defense network to enter North American airspace.

“I think the Biden administration needs to provide more transparency to the American public,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said Monday in an interview with Fox News. “If you don’t start providing information, people can wildly speculate, and we don’t want that.”

“What we need right now is more information on all of these kinds of incidents so the American people have full information,” he added.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee and its defense spending subcommittee, said in an interview with NPR that these incidents have revealed “gaps in our domain awareness,” and that she expects to “have many more conversations with military leaders” regarding the matter.

When asked whether she feels the Biden administration has been “sufficiently transparent” with the American public, Collins said she doesn’t think so.

“I do not believe that the administration has been sufficiently transparent,” she told NPR. “To be fair to the administration, they are still gathering information. And it may be—and I’ve encouraged them to be—more forthcoming once they have recovered and analyzed the debris.”