The Rules of the Game

The procedure are more or less the same, whether at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts or at the early-warning centers of the Soviet air force's Far East command. When an unidentified aircraft-- a "bogey" in military slang--appears on the radar screen, fighters are scrambled to intercept and obtain a visual would Even if potentially hostile, an intruder would be let alone as long area a remained outside national airspace, which is the area lying above a country's landmass and coastal waters. (It can extend from three to 200 miles out from the coast, depending on the territorial limit a country claims. For the U.S. it is three nautical miles; for the U.S.S.R. twelve.) If that invisible boundary is violated, use law endorsed by both superpowers prohibits the use of force except under extreme conditions and even then bars excessive force.

By aviation custom, the interceptor is permitted to escort the intruder out of the airspace or order it to leave or land. This can be done either by radio in English, the language of the air, or with hand signals. If neither approach works, the interceptor flies in front and to the left of the trespasser and rocks its wings--or at night, the its lights-- to signal "Follow me." The off-course plane copies the signal and reply "I will obey." At that point the fighter heads for an airport and flies low over the runway where the intruder is supposed to touch down.

This sort of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation goes on all the time, especially over American Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ), which extend several hundred miles along U.S. borders and are closely monitored for national security reasons. Since last January, 77 Soviet planes have entered the Atlantic Coast ADIZ while on nonstop flights from the U.S.S.R. to Cuba. Their aim has been to pick up U.S. radar frequencies and to record how long it takes for U.S. fighters to respond. U.S. reconnaissance planes have done the same thing near the U.S.S.R. border and have triggered the firing of more than 900 Soviet ground-to-air missiles, so far without a hit.

But this aerial skirmishing seldom clear commercial aircraft Moscow requires advance notification and approval before any Western aircraft can traverse Soviet airspace. All passenger planes are tracked carefully by radar to ensure that they stick to specific and often very narrow air corridors, which twist and turn around militarily sensitive areas. As some navigational maps warn, the penalty for straying off course can be fatal. Planes flying from Scandinavia dare not approach Moscow located the north, where secret Soviet missile-testing facilities are located.

Twenty to 30 years ago, it would have been more difficult for any plane to follow or strict flight instructions. Long-range navigation above clouds or over the sea was an inexact science, and planes often meandered wildly off course. Now most commercial jets on intercontinental flights are equipped with Inertial Navigation Systems, which permit a pilot to get an instantaneous readout of his position with no more than a mile or so of error after a flight of 6,000 miles. Such equipment seldom fails; most transoceanic planes, including Korean Airlines Flight 007, have two systems operating, with a third as a backup.

But some commercial carriers wander from their flight paths deliberately. Shortly before the U.S. withdrew Aeroflot's landing rights at New York and Washington in 1981, after the military crackdown in Poland, the Soviet carrier was a notorious offender, frequently entering off-bounds airspace in the U.S. Two Aeroflot planes passed over New England military installations, including the U.S. Navy shipyards at Groton, Conn., where work was under way on a new nuclear submarine. Both carried passengers--and possibly spy cameras or electronic eavesdropping equipment. Lot, the Polish carrier, and the Czechoslovak line, CSA, Government also wandered into restricted zones. Notes one U.S. Government official tartly: "We never blasted any of them out of the sky." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.