US Changed UAVs Flight Routes After MQ-9 Incident: Tracks Analysis
Sputnik – 17.03.2023
The United States changed the flight routes of its strategic unmanned aerial vehicles Global Hawk after the incident with the MQ-9 Reaper drone that fell into the Black Sea, according to data from the Flightradar24 portal analyzed by Sputnik.
According to information on the portal, one of the US strategic drones, which regularly carry out reconnaissance missions from a base in Sicily to the region of Russia’s Crimea peninsula, once again arrived in the airspace over the Black Sea. This is the first flight of the Global Hawk over the Black Sea since the Reaper incident, and this time the route of the drone has been significantly changed.
As follows from the flight tracks, today, before entering the airspace over the Black Sea, the Global Hawk preliminarily performed barrage over the eastern part of Romania. Previously, Global Hawk had not performed such maneuvers. Then the drone went to the airspace over the Black Sea, where these aircraft are usually on duty in the air abeam the southern tip of the Crimea, sometimes up to 24 hours. However, this time the distance of the drone route from the southernmost point of Crimea has increased significantly. Earlier, these aicraft flew past the peninsula at a minimum distance of 80-100 kilometers (50-62 miles), today the drone passed the southern coast of Crimea at a minimum distance of 150 kilometers (93 miles).
The main loitering area over the Black Sea was also changed — in the current flight of the US drone, it was not abeam the southern coast of Crimea, but much to the east, closer to Novorossiysk and Sochi.
Currently, the Global Hawk continues to fly over the Black Sea towards Romania.
If Russian drones were flying the same distance from US borders would Norad do nothing but monitor them? Or would they be intercepted by F16s and shot down? It is a glaring example of the hypocrisy associated with the “Rules-Based Order.”
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Poot should start talking about Placing Nukes in Cuba again.
Let the West get a taste of its own meds.
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Noted with appreciation for the info/insight.
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Hmm. My comment wasn’t placed where I intended, as a stand-alone item.
Anyway, here: I’m not a fan of once again placing the valiant, long-beleaguered people of Cuba in the crosshairs. How about one of those vaunted Russian hypersonic missiles (wo payload) launched somehow “off course” and ending precisely in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico after ensuring to the extent possible that there would not be ships or other activity in the vicinity as collateral damage? Immediate (by my hero diplomat, FM Sergei Lavrov?) “Oops; we’ll try to be more careful…” would be accompanied subliminally by the appropriate and intended message….
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