What to make of a clash between a Russian jet and an American drone
Aerial interceptions are common. Collisions are vanishingly rare
THE SUN had barely risen over the Black Sea on March 14th when two Russian Su-27 “Flanker” jets began following the American MQ-9 drone, more commonly known as the Reaper, 50 nautical miles south-west of Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula occupied by Russia since 2014. The Reaper had made that trip hundreds of times over many years. So too had the Russian jets. But the encounter culminated in a collision, according to American officials, with one of the Su-27s clipping the Reaper’s propeller and causing it to ditch in the sea. How do such intercepts normally work, and how dangerous are they?
From the March 18th 2023 edition
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