The Russian downing of a US drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday has prompted a diplomatic spat and a race to recover some highly classified technology.
The White House slammed Moscow’s actions as “unsafe, unprofessional and reckless” while Russia’s defense ministry denied its aircraft came into contact with the drone.
The incident marks the first known time Russian and US military aircraft have come into direct physical contact since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago and is likely to increase tensions between the two nations. The US Air Force has relied heavily on the drones for a number of missions; it had logged more than 2 million cumulative flight hours by 2019, according to the Department of Defense’s most recent unclassified Selected Acquisition Report , and was flown for around 330,000 hours each year.The surveillance and strike platforms saw heavy service in the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Air Force has been looking to wind down the production and use of the drones in recent years.
But that argument carries little weight outside of Moscow, given Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory in Crimea in 2014 and then its unprovoked full-scale invasion of the entire country last year.
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