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By the way, US territorial airspace extends only 12 miles from our coast lines. Aircraft coming into this airspace without coordination and permission are subject to be intercepted and forced to land. The US and Canada have also combined through NORAD to establish Air Defense Identification Zones that extend farther out, and these are tied into the civlian air traffic control system. Any aircraft that enters an ADIZ and does not contact air traffic control is eligible for a visit from US or Canadian interceptors for identification purposes, but we do not prevent them from transiting the airspace, since it is international airspace.

So the Russians or anyone else can fly a plane pretty close to the US, and absent any other indication of hostility, there is no justification to shoot it down, or force it to land, or otherwise hinder its flight.

C-dub wrote: I'm also concerned about why NORAD or any ship or naval or marine aircraft base didn't pick up on this aircraft hundreds of miles off our coast and have it intercepted before coming anywhere near our coast.

Where does it say we didn't pick them up at distance? (In fact, we obviously did see them at some point, because otherwise the general would not have known they were there and would not have been able to talk about it).

Also, shooting down a bomber or recce or fighter before coming anywhere near our coast is an act of war. Military aircraft are free to fly through international air space just like any other air plane, there's no justification to shoot them down unless they take some hostile action, and just flying around is not it.

Of course the Soviets did have this attitude about shooting at any one that came near, and we lost quite a few airmen during the Cold War who were flying reconnaisance missions. Also recall that we regularly overflew the Soviet Union and other states with the SR-71 (and I am ok with that), which they tried to shoot down hundreds of time and never got it.

It was a regular feature of the Cold War for NATO and Warsaw Pact planes to fly the edges of each other's sovereign air space to see what would happen. It was done to gather signals intelligence from their air defense systems, and see what would prompt a reaction, and how that reaction would unfold, thus giving some idea of the other side's capabilities.

Consider that we might have a super-duper radar system, perhaps mounted on an airplane, that can see some far classified distance. The other guys want to know exactly how far that system can see. So they start a long way off and fly a military plane towards the US. At some far point we see it. If we immediately react, the other guys see this and think "Aha! It can see at given airplane at N miles." Since one or two airplanes are unlikely to be the start of a major war, maybe our better option is to pretent to ignore the potential intruders until they are right at our door step, so they cannot get an indication of how well our super-duper radar works. Then we send up a couple fighters, they all exchange photographs and international salutes, and everyone goes on their merry way until next time.

The news in this story is not that Russky planes can fly close to the US, the news is that they've started doing so again after laying off for a number of years. The Russians are trying to establish themselves as in international power again, and getting everyone talking about this is part of the strategy.