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.

CNN reported on Wednesday that Russia has reached the crash site of a US surveillance drone in the Black Sea, southwest of Crimea.

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.

“Dangerous and unprofessional interception”

It will be recalled that a Russian fighter jet caused the crash of a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday. The Reaper drone and two SU-27 Flanker aircraft operated over international waters over the Black Sea.

The US European Command said two Russian Su-27 fighter jets conducted an “unsafe and unprofessional interception” of a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone operating in international airspace over the Black Sea.

• “Around 07:03, one of the Russian Su-27 aircraft hit the MQ-9’s propeller, resulting in the downing of the MQ-9 by US forces in international waters.
• “Several times before the collision, the Su-27 jettisoned fuel and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a careless and unprofessional manner,” the source said.

Russia has rejected U.S. accusations that its planes acted recklessly in Tuesday’s incident over the Black Sea and said the drone was flying near Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, on its way to territory claimed by Russia. Russia also claimed that the drone made a “sudden maneuver” and crashed, insisting that there was no contact between the plane and the drone.

The U.S. remotely wiped sensitive software data from an MQ-9 drone that crashed into the Black Sea to prevent Russia from collecting classified information, two U.S. officials told CNN on Wednesday.

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