The MQ-9 Reaper drone shot down Tuesday morning by two Sukhoi Su-27 fighters over the Black Sea, west of Crimea, is not the first, and will not be the last unmanned aircraft to suffer of Moscow's showdown with the West.
Since the advent of the first cold war, in 1946, many planes have been shot down and submarines have gone to the bottom, by pure provocation or simple error, without provoking generalized confrontation.
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The incident that occurred Tuesday morning in the Black Sea, however, is very serious.
First of all because it occurs on the southern flank of a very real war in Ukraine.
Then, because the destroyed Reaper supplied the American intelligence services, and most certainly their Ukrainian partners, with precious images of the Russian military system in Crimea, the reconquest objective designated by Kiev.
Anonymous sources within the USAF suggest that the Russian pilot involved “accidentally” boarded…
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