In a “2 minute topic” posted today, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter reported that the U.S. MQ-9 drone that fell into the Black Sea on March 14 was not innocently transiting international air space when it was intercepted by 2 Russian Su-27 jet fighters. Rather, it was on an intelligence gathering mission. It was peering into Crimea, trying to gather electronic intelligence on Russian air defenses, communications and other activities of interest. By itself, this is no big deal, Ritter said. Everybody does it, but this case is different. The U.S. is gathering intelligence, and then sharing it with Ukraine, “which uses this information to target Russia.” That is, information used for strikes on targets “where Russian soldiers are killed or wounded and Russian equipment is destroyed or damaged.”
This makes the United States an active participant in the conflict, and the MQ-9 Reaper drone loses all protections,” Ritter said. “So what Russia did is give the operators of the MQ-9 Reaper drone every chance to withdraw—19 times the Russian fighters flew past the drone, trying to convince the operators to leave the area. When that didn’t work they used tactics that date back to the Cold War, dumping fuel on the airplane to disrupt its operations and if necessary, as was the case here, bring it down.”
