Watch: Russian fighter jet intercepts and collides with US surveillance drone over Black Sea

The US government has released declassified footage of the incident between two Russian fighter jets and an unmanned US drone in international airspace that later caused the drone to crash. The incident took place in international airspace over the Black Sea on March 14. The US European Command called the action “an unsafe/unprofessional intercept”.

This is the first time since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that the Russian Air Force came into direct contact with the US Air Force.

Here is a video of the incident.

The minute-long video shows two Russian Su-27s intercepting the US MQ-9 Reaper drone. One of the jets dumped its aviation fuel on the drone in a manoeuvre intended to hamper the operations of the surveillance drone. On one of the runs in an attempt to dump fuel over the UAV, the Su-27 seems to collide with the drone with footage cutting out for a brief moment. When the video feed on board the drone resumes, one of the propellers of the aircraft is visibly damaged.

As a result of the collision, the Reaper drone crashed into the Black Sea where waters could reach depths of as much as 5,000 ft. Ukrainian authorities added that the aircraft went down near the waters of Snake Island.

“Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9,” said US Air Force General James Hecker, Commander of the US Air Force in the region.

The US State Department has summoned the Russian Ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov and called the incident a “brazen violation of international law”. US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that the incident was “noteworthy because of how unsafe and unprofessional it was, indeed reckless that it was.”

Meanwhile, Moscow has denied engaging in hostilities with the American aircraft. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed that the drone crashed into the sea due to aggressive manoeuvres while adding that the two Su-57s had not contacted the drone or used their weapons on it.

“As a result of a sharp manoeuvre... the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle entered an uncontrolled flight with the loss of altitude and collided with the surface of the water,” the Russian Defence Ministry said. Antonov had stated that Russia would “view this incident as a provocation” after being summoned, reported Reuters.

While the US had initially expressed its intentions to recover the drone’s wreckage, regardless of whether the drone could even be recovered due to the sea’s depth, the US has no naval assets nearby. Two US officials also confirmed that Russian ships had arrived at the scene of the wreckage and could have likely picked up pieces of the wreckage, reported ABC News.