Dramatic video of incident between US drone and Russian jet released
Washington DC - The US military has released footage of Tuesday's dramatic incident in which one of its unmanned drones collided with a Russian fighter jet and crashed over the Black Sea.
The footage shows a Russian fighter jet dumping fuel as it approaches the US drone and then flying extremely close.
On a second approach, the Russian Su-27 jet dumps fuel again and then collides with the drone, the US European Command Center said on Thursday.
However, the collision is not visible in the video. According to the US, the camera went down for about a minute. After the blackout, the partially damaged propeller of the drone can be seen in the video.
According to US information, the MQ-9 drone collided with a Russian fighter jet in international airspace over the Black Sea on Tuesday. The US military said that two Russian fighter jets had begun an intercept maneuver. One of the fighter jets damaged the propeller of the US drone.
The US complained of unprofessional, unsafe, and reckless actions by the Russian pilots. Moscow has denied any responsibility for the crash and accused the US side of provocation.
Meanwhile, Russia has announced its intention to recover the crashed drone, despite beliefs that there is little intelligence to be gained from it.
Cover photo: via REUTERS