NOTAM 14/9/17

[Michael77]

Zapad 2017 is a planned joint strategic military exercise of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and Belarus scheduled for 14—20 September 2017.

[bizfreeq]

It's called posturing and both sides have been doing it for more years than I've been on this earth!
NATO have an exercise, the Russians move some hardware closer to the ex area, then they start manoeuvres and NATO/US moves hardware closer, generally to the UK for large air assets.
And so it goes on. Nothing particularly unusual in it but in this age of instant news/info, every man and his dog now hear about it!

As a footnote, there is a groundswell of opinion that Putin may use this exercise to take over Belarus by stealth by putting in his rumoured 70,000 personnel then either not leaving afterwards or, at the very least, leaving all their heavy fighting equipment behind for a 'rainy day' so to speak. Only time will tell on this!

[Knife 04]

Zapad 2017 is a planned joint strategic military exercise of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and Belarus scheduled for 14—20 September 2017.

Official end date is 20th September 2017 - some analysts think longer. Reports confirm Russia should withdraw forces by 30th September. At least Belarus are playing ball and attempting to keep the exercise away from the borders

Maybe I am just old and still a 'child of the Cold War' and don't trust a thing Mr P and his 'team' say

Darren

[Mikepaparomeo]

Rare for me to have intel however I do have it on what I believe to be good authority that the deployment is M-E related. Now that they are here, let's see what they get up to.
Regards, M

[graham luxton]

Rare for me to have intel however I do have it on what I believe to be good authority that the deployment is M-E related. Now that they are here, let's see what they get up to.
Regards, M

Amongst other unspecified missions they are taking part in Ex. SERPENTEX, a French-led JTAC exercise. Last year the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Sqdn participated in this exercise, which was centred on Corsica, operating from Moron AB. Think this is just another demonstration of European reinforcement and training, which was probably months in planning, rather than M-E related - happy to be proved wrong though!

[page_verify]

What situation has appeared in the Middle East that would require B-52s to be deployed to Fairford, especially when there has been B-52s and B-1s flying missions every day over Iraq and Syria for the last year from within the Middle East?