Russian warplanes found flying near Alaska for 9th time this year, says US

US fighter jets scrambled to identify and intercept four Russian warplanes flying near Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said on Thursday.

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It’s the third time in about a month and the ninth time this year NORAD has reported such an incident involving Russian aircraft flying near Alaska. This latest incident happened on Wednesday. NORAD said in a statement issued early Thursday that it detected and tracked two Tu-95s and two Su-35s operating in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. Nine U.S. aircraft — an E-3 Sentry command and control aircraft, four F-16s and four KC-135 tankers — scrambled to positively identify and intercept the Russian jets, NORAD said.