Russian Fighter Jet Fires Flares at US Drone Over Syria

US and Russian military at odds over who acted as the aggressor

An MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) in a file photo. Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

U.S. and Russian officials are each accusing the other side of being the aggressor in a dangerous encounter between a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone and a Russian military jet over Syria on July 23.

Russian Rear Adm. Oleg Gurinov told the Russian state-run TASS news agency that a U.S. drone nearly caused a midair collision with Russian warplanes operating near Al-Bab, in northern Syria’s Aleppo region. He claimed that the U.S. drone eventually turned its targeting system on a Russian jet, automatically triggering the Russian warplane’s defensive systems.

“Russian pilots once again demonstrated high professionalism and took timely measures to prevent collisions with the coalition’s unmanned aerial vehicles,” Rear Adm. Gurinov claimed.

However, Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, head of U.S. Air Forces Central (AFCENT), claimed that the Russian jet approached the U.S. drone and began “harassing” it before “deploying flares from a position directly overhead, with only a few meters of separation between aircraft.”

“One of the Russian flares struck the U.S. MQ-9, severely damaging its propeller,” he said in a July 25 statement.

A photo of a damaged drone propeller blade shared by U.S. Air Forces Central after an encounter between a U.S. MQ-9 drone and a Russian fighter jet on July 23, 2023. U.S. Air Force Central

The U.S. Air Force shared a video of the encounter. The MQ-9’s rear-facing camera captured footage of a fighter jet closing in from behind, followed by grainy forward-facing infrared footage appearing to show a fighter jet dropping a series of flares behind.

https://twitter.com/USAFCENT/status/1683810172131483648

“The Russian fighter’s blatant disregard for flight safety detracts from our mission to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Lt. Gen. Grynkewich said. “We call upon the Russian forces in Syria to put an immediate end to this reckless, unprovoked, and unprofessional behavior.”

NTD News reached out to AFCENT officials for more details about the incident but didn’t receive a response by press time.

US–Russia Tensions

The latest interaction between the U.S. drone and Russian fighter jet is similar to another incident over Syria earlier this month.

On July 5, three Russian fighter jets began flying around a trio of U.S. MQ-9 drones during a mission against the ISIS terrorist group. One of the jets, a Su-35, approached one of the U.S. drones from behind, pulled ahead, and then engaged its afterburner, which altered the air pressure ahead of the drone, reducing its ability to operate safely, according to U.S. officials. One of the Russian jets also released several parachute flares around one of the U.S. drones.

The U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, reported subsequent incidents of Russian aircraft harassing U.S. drones on July 6 and July 7.

“Russian unsafe and unprofessional behavior in the air not only degrades our Defeat ISIS mission, it risks unintended escalation and miscalculation,” CENTCOM commanding Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla said of the aerial encounter over Syria on July 23.

On July 20, Rear Adm. Gurinov claimed that a U.S. F-16 fighter jet used its targeting system on a Russian aircraft over Syria and that the United States and its allies had repeatedly violated an aerial deconfliction zone over Syria in recent days.

These allegations between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria are occurring amid already high tensions between the two countries. Russia has bristled at the U.S. and its allies supplying weapons and military systems to Ukrainian forces currently fighting with Russian troops.

In March, the U.S. European Command reported that a Russian fighter jet “struck the propeller” of a U.S. MQ-9 operating over the Black Sea, causing the drone to crash into the sea.

Russian forces have also recently begun striking Ukrainian ports and warning ships traveling through the Black Sea that they could be attacked. These attacks and threats to maritime traffic could disrupt the flow of grain from Ukraine to other parts of the world.

From NTD News.