The United States is evaluating its drone operations in the Black Sea region, weighing the costs and benefits of the flights after Russia shot down one of the planes earlier this week, several officials told CNN.

The U.S. has not completely halted the flights while it completes the review — the military sent the same model of drone, the MQ-9 Reaper, on a mission in roughly the same area over the Black Sea shortly after the collision, U.S. officials said. .

This plane was supposed to survey the crash site and watch the Russians for debris.

But the U.S. military is “thoroughly analyzing” drone routes and assessing how best to reduce the risk of conflict with the Russian military, which regularly flies fighter jets in and out of Crimea, officials said.

The Pentagon plans to analyze the overall costs and benefits of these missions, weighing the potential intelligence value of a particular route against the risk of escalation with Russia.

Some in the U.S. military are concerned that restricting drone routes will affect intelligence gathering related to the war in Ukraine, a senior military official said. But the US has potential intelligence-gathering alternatives, such as spy satellites.

The U.S. is considering another drone flight over the Black Sea in the coming days, according to officials, which would fit into its regular operating schedule.

The collision between a Russian Su-27 fighter jet and an American drone occurred approximately 40-50 nautical miles southwest of Crimea over the Black Sea in international airspace, the US Air Force said on Thursday.

Russia has accused the US of violating airspace it says it created for its “special military operation” in Ukraine – a definition the US does not accept. Officials also said that Russia had not reported such airspace restrictions.

New footage released by the Pentagon on Thursday shows Russian fighter jets rapidly closing in on a drone, dumping fuel on it and appearing to damage the drone’s propeller.

The U.S. was forced to shoot down the drone over the Black Sea after the strike effectively rendered it inoperable, officials said.

Russia would take the wreckage of the downed drone, says an American official

The United States believes that Russia has found the wreckage of a downed American surveillance drone in the Black Sea, a US official familiar with the situation told CNN.

The official described the debris found as either fiberglass fragments or small fragments of an MQ-9 Reaper drone.

But the Biden administration downplayed the importance of the drone wreckage or the possibility of obtaining sensitive information from the wreckage.

“We’ve made it impossible for them to get anything of value from the remains of that drone, regardless of what remains may be on the surface of the water,” John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, told CNN on Wednesday. .

After a US drone collided with Russian fighter jets on Tuesday morning, drone operators took steps to wipe the drone’s sensitive software before it crashed into the Black Sea, US officials said.

“All that’s left and is floating is probably the flight control surfaces, things like that. There’s probably nothing of real internal significance to them in terms of retooling or anything like that,” Kirby said.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the drone had gone down into the sea in a place where the water could be nearly a mile deep.

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