Downed drone, winds of war over the skies of the Black Sea
An American reconnaissance war drone model MQ-9 Reaper, i.e. in fact an unmanned aircraft, it was shot down with a “dirty” dynamic that is not yet fully understood. It seems that the drone – which was flying near the Crimea – was flanked by two Russian Se-27 Flanker fighters and that one of the two got in front of it unloading fuel while the other damaged the rear propeller, which forced the Americans who controlled it from the ground to crash the drone into the sea.
The airspace where the American drone flew is international space, because “the Black Sea belongs to no one” as the US has been keen to underline.
In the evening, the Russians specified that the drone had been located “near the Crimean peninsula, towards the border of the Russian Federation. The aircraft was flying with the transponders switched off. At that point, the air force fighters tried to identify the intruder, but did not use weapons and did not come into contact with the American drone, which lost control and altitude and ended up in the water at the end of a sharp manoeuvre”. .
After what happened, General Christopher Cavoli, NATO commander said: “This incident follows a pattern of dangerous actions by Russian pilots interacting with US and allied aircraft in international airspace. These aggressive actions by the Russian aircrew are dangerous and could lead to miscalculations and inadvertent escalation.’
Also significant was the statement by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby: “We do not know what the intention of the Russians was, but if the message was to exercise deterrence against our overflights in international airspace over the Black Sea, or our navigation in international waters on the Black Sea, it is doomed to fail.”
It must also be said that the Pentagon, through spokesman Pat Ryder, has made it known that even one of the Russian fighters was “probably damaged” in the maneuver defined as “reckless”. The Russian ambassador to the USA has been summoned for this afternoon, as has the American counterpart in Russia.
But what is really happening in the skies of the Black Sea? Incidents of this type are very frequent in situations of conflict but this has a very special meaning because This is the first direct confrontation between the US and Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine last year.
It was probably an accident but as the USA has pointed out, it occurred following a hostile maneuver that could lead to an unwanted escalationto. That’s exactly the point. In similar situations, a small incident that would be irrelevant in conditions of peace or low conflict can instead lead to a direct war between the two superpowers.
Undoubtedly the situation is therefore potentially very dangerous ed the concrete danger is an escalation with the use of tactical nuclear bombs by the Americans, given that the theater of war is very far from their country. The Russian response is different, which instead could hit American targets with intercontinental ballistic missiles and also NATO allies with tactical nuclear weapons. So the US would also use intercontinental missiles or fired from submarines in continuous navigation.
At this point the situation would definitely get out of control and a Third World War would become full-blown.
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