That depends. If they come near Canadian airspace, there's not much we can do about it as it's their right to fly in international air sapce. But the second they should trespass into Canadian airspace, we bring it up at the UN General Assembly, expressing our concern, and see where it goes from there. If they continue to insist on violating Canadian airspace, we bring up the possibility of sanctions. After all, Russia has to maintian its reputation too. If Russia trespasses regularly onto Canadian airspace, what message does that send Russia's neighbours. Certainly they would not appreciate such media attention internationally since it would have spin off effects in their relations with neighbouring countries too.
I believe that over time, this could help put an end to such Russian intrusions without needing Canada to stoop equally low. If you trespass on to my property, no, I won't stoop as low by trespassing onto your property; I'll just take the legal route to make sure you don't do it again.
The only flaw in your point is what happens if it happens to be rogue ... just some terrorist out on a one-way test flight?
A point that was made: macho? wanted to hear the Russian Story
Point is :where does one find the Russian story ???
Russia denies plane approached Canadian airspace
Quote:
"However, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Alexander Drobyshevskiy said Friday the planned flight of the Russian long-range strategic aircraft was part of "regular military training and air patrol plans in the northern latitudes.
"All the international flights regulations were strictly respected," he said in a statement. "Therefore, the very possibility of a violation of Canadian airspace is out of [the] question. The adjacent countries were informed of that flight in good time.""
To be honest with you... I bet Canada doesn't have long range planes or engages in sending planes to their airspace. I could be wrong so a little help is needed.
Nope... they were up our butts following us. They worked themselves right into the pattern and sailed along keeping an eye on us.
But seriously, that last article comes across as if the government is just looking for a flimsy excuse to increase military spending. We'll see how this evolves in the coming days. Because from what we're getting from the Russian side, this shouldn't even be a news item.
But I would bet that Canada doesn't send planes towards Russian airspace and just reacts to Russian planes. So what does that tell you?
MacKay told reporters he wasn't accusing Russia of deliberately timing the flight to coincide with the visit — when Canadian security was focused in Ottawa — but he did call it "a strong coincidence, which we met with … CF-18 fighter planes and world-class pilots that know their business."
"[The pilots] sent a strong signal they should back off and stay out of our airspace."
Also
Kucharek said it's possible the Russian plane was taking part in a military exercise.
There were a number of things in the original aricle that simply didn't add up. i won't list them all because I could be wrong. But, the most glaring was that we were not informed, yet we scrambled perhaps a couple of hours (?) before the "incident."
I can't help but wonder how "strong" the message was from our "pilots" if the Russians did not send additional aircrafts to support this mission.. It's not like this was a War zone and they had something to prove but why would they not wonder why Canada was sending Aircrafts after theirs all of a sudden?
There is something not quite right with this story.. Obviously the Russians didn't seem concerned by our mission as it didn't make their news..