A Matter of (Informed/Expert) Opinion

Senator Mark Kelly (Democrat, Arizona), a former U.S. Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut, has openly opined that the 14 March 2023 incident in which a pair of Russian Su-27 Flanker jet fighters downed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) over the Black Sea is ascribable to incompetence on the parts of the Russian pilots.

Kelly remarked: "I'm not surprised by this. I mean, I flew with Russian pilots, fighter pilots who couldn't fly formation. And I watched this video and it's pretty obvious what happened. He lost sight of it and he crashed into it.”

Kelly further impugned Russia’s combat capability, comparing the Black Sea incident to the "incompetence that we see on the battlefield every day in Ukraine."

"That's why the losses that the Russians are suffering right now are really high,” Kelly posited, adding: “At this point, I mean, the best choice for Vladimir Putin would be to say 'Hey, this isn't working.’”

Notwithstanding Senator Kelly’s allegations of incompetence, a U.S. think-tank tasked with analyzing the 14 March incident has characterized the event as purposeful, calling it “aggressive messaging” by Moscow.

U.S. officials, to include the Biden White House, have broadly sided with Senator Kelly, however, ascribing the splashing of the MQ-9 to lackluster Russian airmanship.

On Thursday, 16 March, the U.S. European Command released video footage reportedly recorded by an aft-facing camera aboard the MQ-9. The camera’s field of view encapsulates a portion of the UAV’s empennage and the lower 180° of its propeller-arc. Two passes of a Russian Su-27 Flanker fighter jet are depicted. The first culminates with a pixelated screen U.S. officials ascribe to jet-fuel being dumped on the MQ-9 by the passing Russian jet. The video-feed, restored some seconds later, captures what appears to be the UAV’s propeller turning normally. The second Su-27 pass culminates with another pixelated screen, but resolves to a view of the MQ-9’s propeller turning listlessly and one of its four blades sporting a badly-bent tip.

Two U.S. military fighter pilots disputed the notion that the Su-27s dumped fuel on the drone, contending that any fuel the Russian pilots may have intended to release from their respective aircraft would have vaporized instantly upon coming in contact with the atmosphere, therefore having no more effect on the MQ-9 than a cirrus cloud.

Speaking at a 15 March briefing, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley stated: "It [the MQ-9] probably broke up, probably not a lot to recover, frankly. … As far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, etc., as normal we would take, and we did take, mitigating measures. So we are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value."

Developed in the early 2000s by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems primarily for the United States Air Force, the MQ-9 is a dated platform. Specimens of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) have been lost over Afghanistan, Syria, and other countries predisposed to enmity with the U.S. and their wreckage likely recovered by enemy combatants. What, if any, military intelligence the downed MQ-9 drone might yield to Moscow remains unclear. 

FMI: www.defense.gov