NORAD intercepts third Russian reconnaissance plane in a week near Alaska

Air Force fighter jets in Alaska scrambled Sunday to intercept a Russian reconnaissance flight nearing Alaskan airspace. The intercept was the third time in less than a week that U.S. fighters launched to chase down a Russian plane, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, marking a surge in Russian prodding inside U.S. arctic airspace.

NORAD detected an Ilyushin IL-20 “Coot,” a Cold War-era Russian reconnaissance plane, inside the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on Aug. 24. In response, NORAD controllers scrambled several aircraft, including two F-16 fighters, to “intercept and visually identify the Russian aircraft.”

“The Russian military aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” NO