WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is trying to assess whether a low-level flight by a Russian bomber over American warships in the Pacific Ocean last weekend was a sign that Moscow is returning to a worrisome "Cold War mind-set," a top Defense official told Congress Tuesday.
Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials want to know why a Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" bomber flew over the aircraft carrier Nimitz and other U.S. vessels in international waters near Japan.
The flight came at a time when the Russian air force has begun reinstating the kind of long-range bomber patrols it conducted routinely during the Cold War.
"We're just trying to go back now and look at what message was intended by this overflight," Cartwright told the Senate Budget Committee. "What are the implications of that activity and how do we best address that?"
His comments were the latest sign of Bush administration concern about friction with Moscow over issues such as U.S. plans for an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, looming Kosovo independence and Washington's strengthened relations with Ukraine, Georgia and other Russian neighbors.
The Putin government also has clashed with the administration over American efforts to halt Iran's uranium enrichment efforts.
Senior U.S. officials, who need Moscow's cooperation for U.S.-sponsored Middle East initiatives, have publicly played down the frictions and dismissed the idea that a Russian threat has re-emerged on their watch. Last month, for example, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that talk of a new Cold War was "hyperbolic nonsense."
Yet privately, U.S. officials have acknowledged that they are concerned about Moscow's increasingly adversarial stance.
The Russian bomber and three others that accompanied it were intercepted by U.S. F-18 fighter jets and escorted as they flew over the U.S. aircraft carrier group, in keeping with normal procedures. Cartwright said the bombers did nothing "unprofessional," and noted that they were in "free and international airspace" at all times.
Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of U.S. naval operations, told reporters in a briefing Tuesday that the bombers had given no warning of their intent to fly over the U.S. warships, and said that in his view it was "not prudent" to fly over an aircraft carrier.
But he said he did not regard the patrol as provocative. "I know I'm not playing this up very much, but that's the way I see it," he said.
