Hey, welcome to this week's lowdown. I'm John Waters. We're going to dive into everything aviation defense. Today we have Russian TU95 bear bombers that were intercepted near Alaska. Well, it's a couple of their escort buddies that were flying around. We have F-35 upgrade delays with TR3 as well as a few other things. The J-355 coming out of China, NASA's X-59, Amy-120 upgrades. and our threat of the day is the AGM 158 jasm.

We're going to talk about a whole bunch more. Before we do that, just a couple admin notes. As always, if you like this type content, I think you'll like the low-down newsletter, which pairs with this quite well. You can click the link down below and you'll get aviation, events related news and content each and every week. Absolutely free. Click the link down below. I'll get aviation events related news and content each and every

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Now, this is premium podcast that do deep dives into fighters, bombers, weaponry, future warfare,

flight operations, and everything in between. Right now they're giving away six months absolutely free. If you click the link down below, and you're one of the first 50 people to sign up, then again, you get six months free. You can use the code 6-2 F-60, and I have that all down in the comments. All right, the Cold War is back, baby. I guess it really never went anywhere, but yet again this week, we had NORAD scrambling F-35s and F-16s out of Elmendorf to intercept

two Russian TU-95 bear bombers, as well as their escort, Sue 35s. Does happen as these bears and

flankers were approaching the Alaskan Aidas. That's the air defense identification

zone. The bubble that goes around every nation that we say is our airspace and you're not supposed

to enter it without permission. It's about three to four hour mission, which was augmented or

assisted by the E3 century. That's the AWACS, airborne man to control. I have talked about that

a lot more than I ever thought we would on this newsletter and this

podcast recently because it all ties into the E7, which is the follow on to the E3 is a 707 platform.

It's got the big dome spinning around providing that radar picture and fighter control out there.

It's supposed to be replaced by the E7, which is more modern 737 platform with a Mesa radar, electronic scandal arrayed radar. Yeah, again, Nokia, not even Nokia, like rotary phone compared to the iPhone. And recently in the past couple of weeks, the Air Force said, hey, we're nixing the E7 by and we're just going to rely on space base assets. And there's some and forth going on between the Air Force and Congress and the budget, but they're saying that E7 is not survivable in a high-end fight. Well, that might be true. There's probably something we need is a stopgap solution because you've got to be able to get to that point in order to do it. And having command and control is critical when it comes to this type stuff, as one might envision

or have an experience depending on your background. So we digress there a little bit, but the

TU 95, this is a 1950s turboprop that carries cruise missiles. Nuclear weapons has about

a 200-mile range in this past week. It was escorted by Sue 35s, which is a modern fourth generation fighter,

very maneuverable. I have seen it perform at air shows and the fire show specifically.

Thrust Vectering is eye watering. It is a rather large fighter. I mean, it's huge. So a lot of

metal flying around out there in the sky. But nonetheless, those are up there. And this past week, it doesn't appear was as dramatic as last year when Sue 35 passed across

the nose of an F-16 at very close range. Rather recklessly, I think most of us would agree.

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