WSJ: US fails to recover drone wreckage following Turkish prohibition

The US hasn’t recovered the wreckage of the spy drone and officials declined to discuss any operations to recover it.

Thus, the US no longer sails its ships in the Black Sea, following a Turkish prohibition on warships imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Early morning local time on March 14, two Russian Su-27 jet fighters and the US MQ-9 surveillance drone originating from Romania flew near one another for about 30 minutes in international airspace, a US defence official said.

In an incident that lasted a matter of seconds about 7 a.m., one of the Russian jet fighters flew past the drone, dumped fuel on it, and pulled away.

The second jet then sought to do the same but collided with the drone, a defence official said. The collision knocked off a piece of the MQ-9 drone and its operators guided it down to the water.