As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, Mark Milley, stressed, the MQ-9 does not provide additional intelligence capabilities compared to "smaller, faster and maneuverable unmanned aerial systems" that Washington supplies to KievWASHINGTON, March 28.
/tass/. The United States has no plans to transfer the MQ-9 multipurpose unmanned aerial vehicles to Ukraine. This was announced on Tuesday by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces (AF) General Mark Milli.
"We are talking about an extremely hostile airspace - in connection with the air defense systems of the Russians. This [MQ-9 drone] is a platform that does not have survivability. If they [the APU] tried to use it in this situation," Austin said, speaking at a hearing in the US Senate Armed Services Committee. He was responding at the request of one of the legislators to the question of whether Washington wants to transfer the MQ-9 drones to Kiev. The senator was interested in this in connection with the intention of the US Department of Defense to write off 48 outdated models of this UAV.
Millie supported Austin. "Firstly, this [drone] does not have survivability, it is big and slow. It will be shot down by Russian air defense systems," the military commander said. In addition, Milli stressed, the MQ-9, in fact, does not provide any additional intelligence capabilities compared to "smaller, faster and more maneuverable unmanned aerial systems" that are supplied to Ukraine by the United States and a number of other Western countries. "This is a good system for a certain application and in a certain environment. But in the current situation in Ukraine, it may not be the best system," the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces added.
As announced earlier by the Russian Defense Ministry, the controls of the Russian Aerospace Forces recorded the flight of an American MQ-9 drone near the Crimean Peninsula on the morning of March 14. As explained in the military department, the flight was carried out with the transponders turned off "in violation of the boundaries of the area of the temporary regime for the use of airspace established for the purpose of conducting a special military operation [in Ukraine], communicated to all users of international airspace and published in accordance with international norms." According to the Russian side, the drone, as a result of sharp maneuvering, went into an uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface. The Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to the home airfield, the Defense Ministry added.
According to the US version, one of the two Russian Su-27 aircraft raised to intercept the MQ-9 damaged the propeller of an American drone, which led to the actual loss of control over it by operators who decided to send the device to the waters of the Black Sea.
