"Exercises like POLAR ROAR enhance cooperation and reinforce NATO's credible and visible posture in preserving a safe and secure environment," said General Kevin Huyck, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at the NATO Allied Air Command (AIRCOM) in a statement.
The bombers lifted off from different bases in Missouri, North Dakota and Louisiana, before meeting up over the Atlantic, and undertaking an uninterrupted flight over Europe, where they refueled mid-air, a key component of the exercise.
Once there, they were treated like intruders by local NATO jets, as part of the alliance's air policing training.
Comment: What nonsense. There is no one from whom to protect the Baltic states. Hyped threats of Russian aggression are wholly illusory. A real threat Europe faces is state-sponsored terrorism. Last time we checked, though, proxy terror groups don't have an air force. The real purpose of these exercises is to keep NATO relevant (when it's not), keep Europeans afraid (when they shouldn't be), threaten Russia (which is stupid), and justify bigger military budgets (which are only designed to make war whores rich).
"NATO's Air Policing mission preserves and safeguards the integrity of Alliance airspace. Scrambles are launched within minutes in response to aircraft not following international flight regulations or approaching NATO member countries' airspace," explained a statement from NATO.
Comment: No it doesn't.
"Allied and Partner jets scrambled to train intercept procedures at designated points in the exercise, and the NATO Airborne Early Warning & Control Force aircraft ensured command and control during operations."
A KC-135 Stratotanker from RAF Mildenhall, England, refuels a B-52 Stratofortress from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, in support of Operation Polar Roar over Scotland, Aug. 1, 2016 U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Kate Thornton
The "unique" exercise was a success, according to the release.
"Our Air Policing assets in Northern Europe and throughout the region embraced the unique training event," said Huyck.
This is not the first time such an exercise has been conducted, with a mission, Polar Growl, being conducted last year.
Although training key skills - refueling and intercepts - the incidents are considered by military watchers to be a direct response to Russian activities. NATO states have repeatedly accused Russian bombers and other aircraft of challenging their airspaces and even buzzing - coming close to - its own ships and planes.
The route chosen for the drill is not incidental. After leaving the Baltic, the planes will fly over the North Pole, an area of increasingly substantial territorial claims, to which Russia is dedicating unprecedented military resources.
The mission will end at the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex (JPARC) where the planes will conduct a bombardment exercising dropping dummy bombs.
Bigger military budgets. Till a few decades ago, say half a century ago , pricing on everything was within "reason". That's if you can tag a human life with a price. But even the military wasn't so corrupt. Suddenly everybody wanted to become rich, not understanding
that being rich really means having an advantage over somebody else. That money has a cost, that when you make money you actually lose money, that money has become a commodity from a means of exchange.
So prices started going up and up and up, creating a cast of ultra rich that eventually got cut off from the majority of earth's population
and bored with their lives tried to implement every crazy idea that came to their minds. We see the results of these ideas everyday in our lives. Freud had said that if a person was really normal , nobody would understand him/her and he/she wouldn't be able to understand
the people around him/her. Maybe he was in contact with aliens (kidding). So there is no normal, never was, still isn't, never will be. But I got carried away. The point I wanted to make is that the only unit left on this planet by which everything is counted, is the monetary unit and that's plain wrong. We are not some figures in an income statement or a balance sheet, but unfortunately that's how the psychos on this planet look at us. When this changes, somebody please wake me up.