The International Business Times reports that “there has been an increase in the number of mid-air challenges between US fighter jets and Russian and Chinese planes, as the eastern Superpowers project their power beyond their borders, a US Air Force official said.”  

“In an echo of 1988 movie Top Gun, in which ace US pilots jostle with their Soviet adversaries mid-air during the Cold War, head of US Pacific Air Forces Air Force General Herbert ‘Hawk’ Carlisle told the Washington Post that Russian and US military aircraft had been involved in a number of stand-offs in recent months.”  

“Carlisle said that the operations were part of President Vladimir Putin’s strategy ‘to reassert Russia into what he thinks its rightful place in the international order is, and part of that is continuing to push into the Pacific.'”