A Russian fighter jet forced a US Air Force drone to descend over the Black Sea on Tuesday after damaging the propeller of the MQ-9 Reaper, according to the US Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Reaper drone and two Russian SU-27 Flanker jets were flying over international waters of the Black Sea when one of the Russian aircraft intentionally flew in front of the drone and repeatedly dumped fuel on it, a statement from the US Army European Command said. .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Russian fighter then struck the drone’s propeller, prompting US forces to shoot down the MQ-9 drone in international waters. Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, added Tuesday that the Russian plane flew “in the vicinity” of the drone for 30 to 40 minutes before crashing just after 7 a.m. Central European time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and struck by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and the total loss of the MQ-9,” said Air Force Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of the US Air Force in Europe and Africa, said in the statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In fact, this unsafe and unprofessional act by the Russians almost caused both planes to crash,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Russian fighter jet forced a US Air Force drone to descend over the Black Sea on Tuesday after damaging the propeller of the MQ-9 Reaper, according to the US Army. The Reaper drone and two Russian SU-27 Flanker jets were flying over international waters of the Black Sea when one of the Russian aircraft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5989,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[1988,1987,193,1989,1990],"class_list":["post-5988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-black-sea","tag-descend","tag-news","tag-russian-fighter","tag-us-drone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5990,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988\/revisions\/5990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}