Russia's strategic bombers have resumed their Cold War practice of flying long-haul missions to areas patrolled by NATO and the United States, top generals said yesterday.

A Russian bomber flew over a US military base on the Pacific island of Guam on Wednesday and "exchanged smiles" with US pilots who had scrambled to track it, said Major-General Pavel Androsov, head of long-range aviation in the Russian air force.

"It has always been the tradition of our long-range aviation to fly far into the ocean, to meet (US) aircraft carriers and greet (US pilots) visually," Androsov told a news conference.

"Yesterday we revived this tradition, and two of our young crews paid a visit to the area of the (US Pacific Naval Activities) base of Guam," he said.

President Vladimir Putin has sought to make Russia more assertive in the world.

Putin has boosted defense spending and sought to raise morale in the armed forces, which were starved of funding in the chaos that followed the fall of the Soviet Union.

Androsov said the sortie by the two turboprop Tu-95MS bombers, from a base near Blagoveshchensk in the Far East, had lasted for 13 hours. The Tu-95, codenamed "Bear" by NATO, is Russia's Cold War icon and may stay in service until 2040.

The bombers give Russia the capability of launching a devastating nuclear strike even if the nuclear arsenals on its own territory are wiped out.

During the Cold War, they played elaborate airborne games of cat-and-mouse with Western air forces.

Lieutenant-General Igor Khvorov, air forces chief of staff, said the West would have to come to terms with Russia asserting its geopolitical presence around the globe.

"But I don't see anything unusual, this is business as usual ... like it is normal for the US to fly from its continent to Guam or, say, the island of Garcia," Khvorov said, referring to a remote Indian Ocean atoll used as a military base by the US.

On Wednesday, young pilots of strategic bombers passed a series of tests, including missile launches. "We fired eight cruise missiles, and all hit bull's eye," Khvorov said.

He said one crew had taken off from Engels in southwestern Russia, hit a target in the north and then flown thousands of kilometers before finally landing in the Far East.

Engels is home to Russia's supersonic Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bombers, in service since 1987 and codenamed "Blackjack" by NATO while called "White Swan" by Russian pilots.

(China Daily via agencies August 10, 2007)