A senior U.S. military official said the U.S. MQ-9 drone that was downed in the Black Sea on Tuesday had taken off from its base in Romania in the morning for a scheduled reconnaissance mission, which typically lasts about 9 to 10 hours.

• Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, described Tuesday’s air confrontation as part of a pattern of Russian “coercive signaling” — military actions that fall short of use of force but are intended to affect an adversary’s behavior.

Regardless of whether the collision was deliberate, he said,“the outcome was consistent with what the Russians were trying to achieve, which is to get the drone to go away” from what was likely a militarily sensitive area.

While the drones, known as Reapers, can carry Hellfire missiles, this aircraft was unarmed and conducting surveillance about 75 miles southwest of Crimea when two Russian jets intercepted it, the official said.

Karen Donfried, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, plans to deliver a formal objection over the drone episode to the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Antonov.

• He is expected to arrive at the State Department by 5 p.m.

The Russian Ministry of Defense denied on Tuesday that one of its aircraft had come into contact with an unmanned American surveillance drone over the Black Sea, instead blaming the drone’s own maneuvers for the drone’s crash.

• “The Russian aircraft did not use onboard weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle, and returned safely to their home airfield,” the ministry said in a statement released on the Telegram messaging app.

Source: The New York Times