Posted on 03/15/2023 6:48:28 PM PDT by McGruff
Three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said the highest levels of the Kremlin approved the aggressive actions of Russian military fighter jets against a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday.
The Russian jets dropped jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper, an unprecedented action, and two of the officials said the intelligence suggests the intent seemed to be to throw the drone off course or disable its surveillance capabilities.
It was “Russian leadership’s intention to be aggressive in the intercept,” said one of the officials.
One official said he had not gotten indications that the signoff went all the way up to Putin. Other officials declined to provide specifics beyond “highest levels.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Is a MQ-9 Reaper more maneuverable than a SU-27?
Name names or go away Comcrap
The means of downing the drone kept it intact as opposed to being shot down and destroyed by a missile. There’s a few reports the Russian Navy has recovered it.
The US has no surface/ariel presence in the Black Sea?
I hear the sound of 30 to 40 million bucks being flushed down the toilet - straight into the hands of the Russian military scientists.
Maybe next russian ‘bear’ bomber that likes to threaten the Alaska exclusion zone could meet the same level of aggression. That thing has a lot of bendable propellers.
Gee. ya think?
Some reports say it was near Crimea. Notice no coordinates have been given out about the crash site.
Send Russia the bill for the drone!
well if it was near Crimea, then it wasn’t near Russia
since Crimea is still owned by Ukraine
Biden should use a Chinese balloon next time. It’ll float along unimpeded.
The details sound as if this was an attempt to bring down the advanced U.S. Reaper drone intact so the Russian Navy could retrieve it and study its construction. A lot of thought was given to this, otherwise a simple air-to-air missile would have blown it to pieces. This was well planned and is certainly not the first Reaper drone to fly in the same area.
The Reaper is an offensive drone so this was not just a surveillance drone.
As we would have done if the roles were reversed.
some form of this story is floating around all over. but given what we have seen public signs of (alleged bunker hit by kinzhals, b52 practice run on st petersburg, now this), is it that surprising?
advanced surveillance craft 18 miles off the coast? if this was atypical, it was possibly bait.
another poster (here?) on another thread noted atypical flight paths starting in january, one actually going over sevastopol.
allegedly this one had an advanced ISR suite only.
And I should believe NBC, why, again?
Moscow will try to retrieve U.S. drone wreckage in Black Sea after Pentagon blames Russian jet for crash
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-jet-us-drone-collision-moscow-try-retrieve/
>since Crimea is still owned by Ukraine
maybe they should move some Ukrainians there
i think they rather look at it as an investment as bait.
ultimately they need a series of events (or one huge one) to sell the public on starting WW3 in full roar. not sure how many gorgon stare rigs they have, though...
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