As the US launched its Global War on Terror in the early 21st century, it needed a new high-tech weapon to minimize the risk of US casualties that could sap domestic morale for the operations. Enter: the MQ-9 Reaper, a hunter-killer drone flown from afar and sporting numerous weapons to rain death from above.
other assets in, manned aircraft and so forth. so i would say it s important. look, we ve been able to manage the conflict, support the ukrainians, avoid escalation, and hopefully wear out putin s forces without direct confro confrontation. we ve done it because we have superior intelligence. so this drone is part of that intelligence superiority. as evalyn said, we don t want to be deterred from putting other drones and other assets into the region. it s really important. you know, this mq-9 reaper drone, it s not a small little aircraft. it s pretty large. almost as big as a regular warplane. so what is the pentagon s next move? through the national security council has made clear it will do what evalyn and general clark are suggesting, that is keep flying reaper jones and other intelligence gathering assets over the black sea and in international air space as the u.s. and russia have the right
not going to let this escalate. but we do need to make sure that we haven t deterred from exercising our right to free navigation of the international air space over ukraine i m sorry, over the black sea. and so it s going to be important for us to get back in there, send another drone back in there. so that does, of course, you know, it does entail some risk, but it s not escalatory. it sort of is resetting things. i don t think that our government wants to escalate anything. general clark, how critical are these drones to gathering intelligence and monitoring the battlefield in ukraine. the drones are one of the systems we re using. we re also using manned aircraft over the black sea. if you had to stop one system, could you totally compensate for the loss of collection? probably not without putting
drone, an unmanned surveillance drone, the u.s. military the u.s. says this was over international waters or international air space in the black sea. these russian jets, acording to the u.s. military release that come out of european command, they were flying close, conduct something unsafe maneuvers, and at one point at least one of them even dropped some jet fuel on or near the u.s. reaper drone and then during the course of what the military is calling unsafe and unprofessional actions one of the russian jets clipped the propeller of the u.s. reaper drone, causing it to nearly crash, according to a statement from the head of u.s. air forces in africa and europe and the u.s. was forced to down that drone in the black sea. the u.s., of course,saying it i unprofessional it is not uncommon for intercepts that s when one aircraft comes