Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin did not discuss with his Russian counterpart the incident in which a US MQ-9 Reaper drone crashed in international waters of the Black Sea after being intercepted by two planes. Russian Su-27 fighters. This was announced Tuesday by Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder.
“As far as the conversation between Minister (Lloyd) Austin and his colleague, as far as I know, that hasn’t happened yet,” Ryder said at a press briefing. “DoD officials have not spoken to Russian authorities about this particular incident.”
The Pentagon said the US military was forced to allow the MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance drone to crash into the sea due to damage from a collision with a Russian plane.
“Due to the damage, we were forced (to drop the drone) in the Black Sea,” General Ryder said in an interview with reporters, according to whom the Russian side has not yet returned the fallen drone to the sea. The Americans.
Ryder added that the Russian Su-27 flew alongside the American drone for 30 to 40 minutes before colliding with it. According to Ryder, this led to the drone’s loss of control and forced the Americans to drop the drone in international waters.
Ryder noted that the United States has been conducting reconnaissance, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions in the international waters of the Black Sea “for some time now”, and that these missions began even before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2022.
“The key point here is that while interceptions are not uncommon per se, the behavior of the Russian pilots was unusual, annoying and dangerous,” Ryder added.
It is unclear whether the drone was carrying weapons, but the Pentagon is working to declassify footage taken during the incident. According to a representative of the Ministry of Defense, it is possible that the two Russian Su-27s taking part in the interception suffered damage during the interception.
Meanwhile, the Russian military has already said that the Su-27 “did not make contact” with the American drone. Moscow said the Reaper crashed due to “difficult maneuvers”.
“The Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with the drone and returned safely to their base airfield,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
