American aircraft conduct reconnaissance flights near Crimea
On Sunday, the RQ-4B Global Hawk, a strategic unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV of the US Air Force carried out an eight-hour reconnaissance flight near the Black Sea coast of Russia, flying near the Crimea, the Kerch Strait and Kuban, Interfax reports, citing the monitoring data of Western aviation portals.
Later in the afternoon, a US Navy P-8A Poseidon patrol plane joined it. Both aircraft took off from Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Italy. Both aircraft which can conduct electronic intelligence operations hundreds of kilometers inside the enemy’s territory carried out flights at 35 to 45 km from Russian coasts.
The RQ-4B Global Hawk carried out series of flights at about 35 km from the Russian coast near Sevastopol, 45 km from the entrance to the Kerch Strait and 40 km off the coast of the Kuban region near Novorossiysk. The UAV flew along the western end of the Crimea along its south-west and southern coast to the Krasnodar region.
The flight of the P-8A Poseidon was about 35 km to the West from the Crimean coast near Sevastopol and 40 km from Novorossiysk over the international waters of the black Sea. This is the ninth of American intelligence flights near the Russian coasts over the Black Sea after Russia seized three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait.