 During the height of the Cold War, a pair of Bear D aircraft would fly from the Kola peninsula to Cuba every week resulting in frequent intercepts as they passed along the Eastern coast of the United States.During the same time period, annual North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exercise in the North Sea area elicited daily flights of Bear D aircraft operating in pairs to locate the aircraft carrier(s) in the area.Operations Northern Wedding and Ocean Safari typically brought at least one U.S. Navy carrier into the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) gap during the exercise prompting considerable monitoring by Soviet surface ships, submarines, and aircraft.