Still unclear whether Black Sea incident intentional: CJCS Gen. Milley

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
15 Mar 2023 23:41

Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley discussed the recent incident with the

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley speaks during a briefing with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon in Washington, Wednesday, March 15, 2023 (AP /Andrew Harnik)

Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley revealed that the United States still does not know if the downing of a US drone over the Black Sea was intentional.

"So, was it intentional or not? Don't know yet. We know that the intercept was intentional. We know that the aggressive behavior was intentional. We also know it was very unprofessional and very unsafe," Milley said during a press briefing.

Earlier today, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price speculated the downing of the US drone in the Black Sea near Crimea was likely an unintentional incident.

On Tuesday, the US European Command issued a statement saying that "several times before the collision, the [Russian] Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound, and unprofessional manner." Subsequently, the statement alleged that this caused the drones’ operators to malfunction and ultimately fall.

The Russian Defense Ministry denied US allegations and said its fighter jets did not come into contact with the US MQ-9 drone that crashed into the Black Sea earlier, pointing out that the drone crashed due to the poor operators and "sharp maneuvering".

Mark Milley also added that recovering the US MQ-9 Reaper drone may be difficult to conduct because of the depth at which the aircraft may have sunk to.

"So any recovery operation is very difficult at that depth by anyone," Milley said. "We don't have any ships there, but we do have a lot of allies and friends in the area that will work through recovery operations, that's US property, and we'll leave it at that at this point, but it probably broke up, there's probably not a lot to recover, frankly, as far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, etc."

Additionally, according to Milley, the United States took decisive measures to ensure that the drone no longer possessed anything of value, such as sensitive intelligence.

CNN reported that the US military remotely erased sensitive software from the drone before it was intercepted. The sensitive intelligence was reportedly wiped out to prevent Russia from accessing them from the drone remnants.

Mark Milley clarified that the United States does not seek an armed conflict with Russia and believes the Black Sea incident must be investigated first.

“Clearly, we do not seek armed conflict with Russia, and I believe that at this point we should investigate this incident and move on from there, but we will continue to exercise our rights in international airspace,” Milley said.

He then added that he plans to talk with his Russian counterpart in this regard. “I do plan to talk to my counterpart General Gerasimov. We have a scheduled call. We'll see if that works out,” Milley said.