The United States of America sent the RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone to the Black Sea.
According to Flightradar24, an RQ-4 Global Hawk with the call sign FORTE10 entered the waters of the Black Sea.
The RQ-4 took off from Naval Air Station Sigonella near the Italian city of Catania.
Presumably, the American military sent a new drone to the Black Sea region to inspect the crash site and monitor the actions of the Russian military, which began searching for the wreckage of the UAV.
Ned Price, Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, said the United States is seeing signs that Russian forces are trying to retrieve the wreckage of a crashed US drone from the bottom of the Black Sea.
At the same time, according to him, it is likely that the drone broke into pieces when it hit the water, and these pieces probably sank at a depth of thousands of meters.
Speaking on CNN, Price said the US military “took steps to reduce the intelligence value” of the drone before it crashed.
The day before, the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not rule out the possibility that Russian forces could carry out underwater activities in the Black Sea related to the search for a downed US drone.
Previously, the White House suggested that the downed drone over the Black Sea might not be found due to the depth of the sea.
As previously reported, on March 14, the USA had to sink an MQ-9 Reaper drone after a collision with a Russian Su-27 fighter jet.
On March 17, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu nominated the Su-27 fighter pilots involved in the downing of the MQ-9 Reaper over the Black Sea for an award.
According to the Russian version, the military prevented the UAV from violating the “borders of the area of the temporary regime of airspace use.”
Russia has warned it sees such flights as “provocations” that would warrant a similar Russian response. Looks like the ball is back in the russian court. The US have sent out the invitation, let’s see if the big mouths in the Kremlin will back up their words.
Without having to fear any consequences, what will stop the mafiosi from downing this one?
Service ceiling of global Hawk 65000 ft.
Service ceiling of SU 27 59,000 ft.
The ruskies could still easily down the drone with either ground-to-air missiles, or air-to-air.
That would require actually shooting at it which they could have done with the Reaper but did not
Yeah, for some reason, they didn’t shoot at it. I wonder why.
I wished they just bombed the shit out of any Russian coming near the crash site.
It is America’s drone, not theirs