Polish and Russian fighters on Tuesday practiced coordinated intercepts of a mock hijacked airplane near their common border as part of Vigilant Skies 2011, the first-ever NATO-Russia counterterrorism air exercise. In the exercise scenario, a Polish aircraft taking off from Krakow acted as the “renegade” platform. Polish fighters intercepted it before handing it over to Russian fighters that escorted it back to Poland for landing. On Wednesday, Turkish and Russian fighters will carry out similar coordinated intercepts of a Turkish “renegade” aircraft over the Black Sea. Vigilant Skies falls under the NATO-Russia Council Cooperative Airspace Initiative that is designed to prevent terrorist attacks using civilian aircraft as weapons, as happened on 9/11. The United States and Russia completed a similar air exercise last August over the Pacific near Alaska and the Russian Far East. (NATO release) (See also Associated Press report and Deutsche Welle report.)
The Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile is behind schedule and may significantly overrun its expected cost, which could partially explain why the service is reviving the hypersonic AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid-Response Weapon.