[eesmith]

You're right. The examples I mention are not like the border crossings between India & Pakistan.

> they're generally going to deliberately penetrate the "buffer zone",

Yes. My comment concerned your earlier use of principally in "principally intended to preserve normative freedom of movement rights."

I believe they are principally done as surveillance flights, with freedom of movement rights as an important but secondary role.

Otherwise you could use something cheaper than a fully-crewed EP-3.

Besides planes, see "Soviet fishing trawlers" (" After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized a counter AGI program for United States destroyers to come alongside the AGIs to push against them, foul their screws with steel nets, and focus high power electromagnetic transmitters to burn out the amplifying circuitry of their electronic sensors." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_ship ).

[upsidesinclude]

Now that you two have finished, recall that per HN we are intended to grant the best interpretation of a statement and not the worst.

My comment stands and the misinterpretation has at least born fruit.

The 'border crossings' i mentioned might have been better referred to as 'border stations', where rehearsed performance occurs daily between guards. Not referencing physical incursions into disputed territories to maintain claim.

[eesmith]

Then no, it's not like an "expensive version of the border crossings between India & Pakistan."

For one, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/04/politics/us-f-22-intercep... comments that it could be a "routine" training exercise. ("a senior defense official stressed, last month, that they are "not a concern" and attributed the uptick to a recent lack of available Russian aircraft and need to boost training.")

While the example you give is not.

[upsidesinclude]

What?

Reread my comment.

'Not a concern' is certainly what I would consider high kick marching competitions between guardstations

[eesmith]

You thought badcppdev might be nervous about the modern equivalent of high kick marching competitions?

After badcppdev pointed out the US historically flew nuclear armed bombers to the borders of the USSR 24 hours a day? Including with the deliberate goal of escalating the nuclear threat to the Soviet Union, in order to improve America' position at the negotiating table?

Your statement "US jets intercept and turn them around" is incorrect - these flights are not turned around.

"High kick marching competitions" are not training exercises. Nor are they surveillance operations.