Suppose a hostile nation sends military aircraft flying near U.S. soil (as Russia is wont to do from time to time) - since one’s territorial waters extend 12 miles past one’s coast, does this mean the airspace above that 12-mile-wide swath is treated exactly the same as if the Russian bomber flies directly over Baltimore, or not quite the same? (by international law, that is)
The airspace is the space over your territory, which includes your territorial waters. From a legal standpoint, crossing over your territorial waters is the same as crossing over Baltimore. Either way, you are flying over another country’s territory.
As a practical matter, many countries (not just the Russians) routinely fly along each other’s borders, and mistakes happen. Sometimes a plane will go a bit off-course. If a Russian plane were to fly 3 miles inside the line, the U.S. planes escorting them would let them know that they were on the wrong side of the line. On the other hand, flying so far off-course that you overfly Baltimore would warrant a much stronger response, since that starts to look less like a navigational oops and more like an intentionally provocative act.
In either case, shooting generally isn’t the first response. There have been too many cases of airliners going way off-course that have resulted in shoot-downs, and that has led to very negative political repercussions for those involved.
Of course, sometimes a country decides that it wants to extend its influence farther than 12 miles from the coast. Then you get fun events like the Gulf of Sidra incident or the Hainan Island incident.
Thanks for the responses.
Tangential question: Seems like when it comes to intercepting hostile aircraft, there’s only lethal action (shoot down the thing) or just fly next to it constantly issuing futile warnings (if it doesn’t comply), which is a rather unfortunate binary choice. What are the less-than-lethal actions available?
Or flying really close to the offending aircraft. See, e.g., this video of an SU-27 intercept of a EP-3: Russian fighter jet flies dangerously close to US airplane, Navy says
FTA:
Cut it too close, and you end up with this: Hainan Island incident - Wikipedia
During maritime freedom of navigation confrontations, countries have been a bit more willing to trade paint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SME4w037FgA (USS Yorktown rubs against a Soviet Krivak II) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4jQhnXrWbg (USS Caron colliding with a Soviet Mirka).
Not that it’s one sided. AIUI, United States submarines escorting US ballistic missile submarines deploying from port, may threaten to ram or otherwise deliberately set collision courses for foreign vessels attempting to follow the SSBN. In addition to attempting to blind the foreign vessel with active sonar.
Interesting. Is there such a thing as an aerial equivalent of ‘sonar lashing,’ whereby an interceptor could use its radar to harass a hostile aircraft? I recall that the MiG-25 was under restrictions to never turn on its radar while on the ground because its radar was powerful enough to kill rabbits thousands of feet away (and presumably powerful enough to seriously maim humans.)
Maybe an interceptor could adjust its radar to some “fry-the-enemy-pilot-but-at-low-setting” mode to let the enemy aircraft know it **really **needs to go home?
Those that know can’t tell, but apocryphally, the EF-111 was able to crash ATC radars over a wide area if it were allowed to stretch its legs with jamming. While its kill of a hapless Iraqi (F-1, IIRC) is infamous, I thought there was a case in the literature of it, another EW aircraft, or some other radar, burning out circuitry in another aircraft and causing it to crash. Intentionally, so distinct from, e.g., UH-60 accidents resulting from accidental RF interference with their flight controls, caused by flying too near a radio mast. Though if you were that close, the guy wires would seem a greater hazard.
I had thought the E-3 and E-2 AWACS plans were required to modulate their radars during inflight refueling lest they cook the tanker toads? OTOH, wouldn’t the metal shell of the tanker provide sufficient protection for the crew from the RF? I genuinely don’t knowl
According to the popular press, turning on your targeting radar is a seriously unfriendly act.
I worked on airborne radar and flir systems many years ago. The AWACS was the one airborne system that was built on the ground-based side of the facility. It’s basically a huge ground-based type of radar shoved on top of a plane. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they have to turn the radar off during refueling. It’s not safe to stand in front of much smaller fighter jet radars while they are operating.
The metal shell of the tanker is going to act like a Faraday cage and will shield the guys inside. For the same reason, when lightning hits a plane, the energy tends to go around the outer shell of the plane and the people and electronics inside the plane are usually not hurt. A plane isn’t a perfect Faraday cage, though. The shell has holes in it, and the tanker guys have windows that they look through so that they can steer the boom towards the plane being fueled and so that they can watch what’s going on in case something happens during refueling.