the first debate? shadow looms large over this primary process. thank you all. covered a lot of are grounds. thanks for joining us. the u.s. military just announcing that these f-22 fighter jets right here have been deployed to the middle east because of concerns about unsafe and unprofessional behavior by russian pilots there. this is a move that is coming as the u.s. says there s ban recent increase in aggressive flights by russia in the region. joining us now to talk a little bit about what this all means, we have retired u.s. air force colonel cedric leighton. walk us through this. tell us why the u.s. is deploying these f-22 raptors? start by looking at capabilities you can take us through. absolutely. the f-22 is really an air superiority fighter way top speed, it says here, 1,500 miles per hour. ceiling height 6,500 feet and
one of the same air space, and there a ckconflickshun pace, an the tension is getting higher, because we reported on a russian pilot trying to dog fight american jet, and this is when there was not a warning. that is the sort of issue that can lead to bad response or escalation. that is why it is so concerning to the united states. and the commander said that they are seeing from the russians unsave and now they are scrambled f-22 jets to the region and flown missions over
easily fly over 1,800 miles in distance. key thing. key things they re going after, incidents like this. su-35 jets from the russian air force attacking the f 16s, doing maneuvers as if they were attacking f 16s and coming in as if they were going to do a dogfights. you can see from the gun camera footage right here. so what that means is that they re engaged in maneuvers that are really dangerous to the f 16s that are currently deployed over syria. we re bringing a far more capability aircraft, f-22 in to view that. when you look at numbers of this, since the beginning of march russia has violated those deconfliction protocols 85 times. i mean, that s a lot. we can t forget as you pull up this next slide that the u.s. has a military presence here. right. 900 service members based in syria right now. in various locations throughout the country.