What the 4th Fleet is up against
Walter Martínez analyzes the recent flight of Russian TU-160 strategic bombers from Venezuela. The planes circled the Caribbean, then flew down the coast of Brazil before turning back to Venezuela. Total flight time was 6 hours. The planes invaded no one's airspace, flying over neutral waters only, but the message was clear: They can cover the entire area which, just by coincidence, happens to be where Dubya's newly resurrected 4th Fleet is to be patrolling. They can do this quite easily.
And the reason isn't hard to see: the TU-160, which has no equal in American technology, was designed during the Cold War era to patrol the entire Arctic. It can easily penetrate Canadian airspace without being detected on NORAD's pipsqueaky radars, and from there, it's just a short hop south to targets in--guess where.
What a lucky thing the Russians seem disinclined towards nuclear war nowadays, eh?