Originally Posted by SayAlt

Actually, since the ridiculously labeled and totally inaccurate "End of the Cold War", Russia has been mostly benign and our respective militaries have been downright friendly with one another. Being broke and domestically (inwardly) focused does this to a military (Russia).

Only recently (since Russian invaded Crimea in 2014, in fact) has Russia returned to being so provocative with incidents like this, as anyone who reads and kept up with world news knows.

It's really simple. Flying within a mile or two of a warship at 1,000' or higher can be considered "normal", particularly when paralleling the ship's heading (ie. symbolically <and militaries are very symbolic> the gun barrels are not pointing at the vessel). In contrast, screaming in below the horizon at combat speeds perpendicular to the ship's heading and passing over the ship's deck at less than 100' is as "aggressive", provocative, unnecessary, and dangerous as it gets.