US blames Russian pilot’s ‘lack of competence’ for drone incident
Joel Gehrke
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An aerial incident that forced a U.S. Air Force drone to crash was “tinged with a lack of competence” by a Russian pilot, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team.
The loss of the drone occurred in international airspace over the Black Sea on Tuesday, making it “a brazen violation of international law,” as State Department spokesman Ned Price put it. Yet the senior department official demurred when asked if the United States views the incident as an aggressive act by Moscow and downplayed the significance of Russia’s “motivations” in the interception.
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“We’re not in a position to speak to what their motivations may have been,” Price said. “We can’t characterize the motivations. In a sense, however, the motivations matter much less than what actually transpired, and that’s what we’re speaking to today.”
Russia’s defense ministry claimed that the American MQ-9 Reaper drone was flying near Crimea, “violating the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime” that Moscow asserted unilaterally as part of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“The Russian aircraft did not use on-board weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle, and returned safely to their home airfield,” the Russian Defense Ministry claimed, per state media.
A senior Senate Republican argued that the incident reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to discourage U.S. officials from supporting Ukraine.
“Putin wants nothing more than for incidents like these to push the United States away from our support of Ukraine and prevent us from rolling back his destructive policies,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We must choose to project strength against our adversary, not appease this dictator with words or do-called ‘de-escalation.’”
Drone operators crashed the Reaper after “it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft,” according to U.S. military officials. “In fact, this unsafe and unprofessional act by the Russians nearly caused both aircraft to crash,” Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Air Forces Africa, said Tuesday.
The collision conduced an episode of harassment that had unfolded over more than 30 minutes of risky maneuvers by a pair of Russian Su-27s fighter jets, according to Hecker’s team.
“Several time before the collision, the Su27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner,” the U.S. European Command bulletin said. “This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.”
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Blinken’s team summoned Russian Ambassador Antony Antonov to the State Department “to convey our strong objections” to Russian pilots’ behavior.
“The ambassador will hear directly from senior officials about our strong objections to what was clearly an unsafe and unprofessional intercept on the part of a Russian aircraft,” Price said.