The US European Command released video footage of the encounter between a US surveillance drone and Russian fighter jets over the Black Sea. Notably, Russia had denied any encounter earlier.
twi Pentagon said the mid-air encounter lasted between 30 and 40 minutes, and the newly declassified video shows important parts.
In the video, the MQ-9 Reaper drone’s camera is pointed back towards its tai while the rear-mounted propeller is spinning. Then, a Russian fighter plane termed a Sukhoi SU-27 comes into view.
In a part of the video, the Russian plane flies and then again dumps fuel on the US drone. Following that, the Russian fighter jet crashed into the MQ-9 Reaper, damaging the propeller and forcing the US to land the drone in the Black Sea. Notably, earlier, Russia said that there was no collision.
When the camera is turned back on in the video, the view is again facing backwards, and the damage to the propeller from the crash is seen. Since the drone’s propeller was broken, the pilots flew it like a glider as it went down over the Black Sea and landed in international waters southwest of Crimea.
Two US officials told CNN that before the drone crashed into the water, the operators remotely erased the sensitive software. The action made it less likely that secret information would fall into the hands of an enemy.
On “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday, John Kirby, who is in charge of communications for the National Security Council, said that the drone had not been found and that he was “not sure” if the US would be able to find it.
Moscow had already said that it would try to get the drone’s parts back, and on Wednesday, two officials said that Russia had reached the Black Sea crash site of the MQ-9. Kirby wouldn’t confirm the news, but he did say that the US had “made it impossible for them to get anything of intelligence value from the parts of that drone that might still be floating on the water.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense will decide whether or not to get the drone back, the Kremlin has said.
“The military has the right to do this. “They will do it if they think it is important for our interests and security in the Black Sea,” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters on a conference call.
Moscow and Washington have been in contact through military and diplomatic channels following the incident.
