Well this seems like a very appropriate and awesome response to Russia’s taunting of us last week with bombers doing flybys near the coast of Alaska:
CNN – The US Air Force is sending its newest fighter jets to Russia’s doorstep as part of a program set up after Russia annexed Crimea from the Ukraine in 2014, a US official tells CNN.
F-35A stealth Joint Strike Fighters will fly from the United Kingdom to NATO-ally Estonia in the coming days, the official said. Estonia, a former Soviet republic, shares an almost 200-mile-long border with Russia.
F-35s will also deploy to Romania, another current NATO member and former Warsaw Pact ally of the Soviet Union, the official said.
Both Estonia and Romania are wary of Russian aggression following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. The official said the F-35A deployment to Europe is part of the European Reassurance Initiative set up in the wake of that annexation.
The F-35s are just the latest of example of US Air Force jets sent to Europe in connection with the European Reassurance Initiative. Others have included F-22s, F-16s, F-15s and A-10s.
Thousands of US ground forces have also been deployed in Europe as part of the program, including a US Army Armored Combat Brigade Team sent into Poland with great fanfare in January.
A Russian official called that deployment “a threat to us.”
“This is an action that threatens our interests, our security,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the time.
The movement of the F-35s, eight of which arrived in the UK on April 15 from their base in Utah, comes as Russian bombers have been making flights along the Alaskan coast.
Here’s a map that shows just how close Estonia is to Moscow, only about 400 miles away. And if you look at the bottom of the map, Romania is just across the Black Sea from Crimea:
