American pilots trained to fight Russia will protect Putin: Inside massive security operation ahead of Trump summit in Alaska
As he sets foot on U.S. soil Vladimir Putin will be protected by U.S. fighter jets that just a few weeks ago were engaged in a hairy encounter with a Russian nuclear bomber.
Putin will enter an airborne ring of steel maintained jointly by U.S. and Canadian forces under the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
‘It absolutely is an irony,’ retired Royal Canadian Air Force major general Scott Clancy, told the Daily Mail.
Clancy was deputy commander of NORAD’s Alaska Region and directed interception of threats when President Donald Trump last visited the site of the summit, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, in 2019.
NORAD has been dealing with growing pressure from Russian, and even Chinese, aircraft in recent years, but now their security umbrella will protect Putin.
‘It’s the same troops. It’s the very same tankers, fighters, command and control people. So there is an irony there, for sure,’ Clancy added.
‘The protection that is afforded for North American airspace is afforded because we defend the continent at all times.’
A U.S Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon patrolling the skies
It would be the same if Kim Jong-un visited the United Nations in New York, he added.
Putin will be the first Russian leader to visit Alaska since Russia sold it to the U.S. in 1867.
It remained unclear whether he will have his plane escorted for some of the journey by Russian jets, or if U.S. ones would escort him in, but Clancy said it was unlikely.
‘A Russian fighter aircraft would never be given an authorization to enter Canadian or American airspace,’ he said.
‘And, at the same time, if they tried to enter that airspace without an authorization, they’d be met by NORAD aircraft and turned away.’
Vladimir Putin will be under the U.S. security umbrella
Trump is hosting Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage
He added: ‘This isn’t what Vladimir Putin wants, he’s not looking at a confrontation in terms of this summit. He wants the summit and the way in which they deal with each other to be the newsworthiness, not the security around it.
‘I don’t think the Russian military is going to try anything like that. It would be unprecedented for them to do so. ‘
The Secret Service will lead the tight security operation for the summit.
If they want extra protection in the air they will ask NORAD.
There are expected to be a ‘significant’ number of aircraft either airborne or on very close ground alert to respond to any threats.
Soldiers at Joint Base Elmendorf- Richardson in Alaska
That includes fighter jets and tankers which will ultimately be coordinated from NORAD headquarters in Colorado.
Just three weeks ago, on July 21, NORAD scrambled fighter jets to intercept Russian aircraft near the Bering Sea in an operation that lasted three hours.
It involved two Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers and two Russian Su-35fighter jets.
They flew into the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which is a perimeter area monitored by NORAD.
The TU-95 is a long-range bomber which is capable of dropping nuclear weapons on targets in the U.S.
NORAD F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft positively identified and intercepted a Russian Tu-95 military aircraft over the Bering Sea off Alaska’s western coast on July 22, 2025
NORAD sent up two F-35s and four F-16s and watched the Russians until they left.
The ADIZ area stretches for millions of square miles across the Bering Sea, Arctic Ocean, and the northern Pacific Ocean.
In an incident in September 2024 a Russian SU-35 jet performed a so-called ‘headbutting’ maneuver on a U.S. F-16, cutting in front of it and causing turbulence.
The U.S. Air Force called it unsafe, unprofessional, and dangerous.
Russia and China staged joint drills with their nuclear-capable Tu-95MS and H-6 strategic bombers off US state Alaska amid high tension between East and West.
In July 2024, NORAD intercepted a Chinese Xian H-6 nuclear bomber in the ADIZ alongside Russian TU-95s.
It was the first time a Chinese aircraft had been spotted within the ADIZ.
‘That’s a watershed moment. We’ve never seen that before,’ said Clancy.
‘We’ve been watching, over the course of the last 15 years, the evolution of Russian military tactics, especially in and around Alaska, but everywhere along the periphery of North America.
‘There are more aircraft. They stay longer. They penetrate further into the ADIZ. They come up closer to the coastlines, although they never they never break into American or Canadian airspace itself. And they do it in a way that it’s very obvious that they’re preparing to attack North America.
‘And having the Chinese do that with them – everywhere you see alignment between Russian and Chinese military forces, you worry, because, quite honestly, nothing good can happen from that.’
