Trust me bro

I would like to trust everyone but at the same time its nice when evidence and facts are provided to support a position or statement. yes I know, im a heretic.

US Secretary of Defense said it recently

(“Make no mistake, the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows,” Mr. Austin said in remarks at the beginning of a virtual meeting of some 50 nations supporting Ukraine’s efforts in the war against Russia.)

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/15/world/russia-ukraine-news

Not sure of the other part maybe French fever dreams

thank you!

presumably that equates to "everywhere" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments

This post was edited by ferdia on Mar 15 2023 11:10am

Np

I haven't read this one but here is a source for the other claim

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/03/15/russia-races-to-salvage-us-drone-wreckage-in-black-sea-a80484

Quite similar to what the US did with the Chinese balloon then.

im not saying good or bad, im merely highlighting it was beneficial for the US and Russia respectively.

This post was edited by ferdia on Mar 15 2023 11:13am

Yeah there is nothing really surprising about Austin's remarks or Russia salvaging the wreckage IMO

It's like maritime law, you can have a huge book of rules but rule of tonnage surpasses them. That's why sailboats get out the way of huge boats when they have right of way per maritime. The 'international' spaces are only as valid as the nations with the sticks to keep the status quo.

As others have pointed out, this is def a territory gray area. Reasonable argument on spying into a warzone, but aircraft was not over undisputed territory.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/14/1163414094/russian-fighter-jet-hits-u-s-military-drone-over-black-sea-forcing-it-down

The US won't say where the drone was flying or where it was downed.
The Ukrainians claim it was "30 miles off the coast, southeast of snake island"
Russia denied colliding with the drone at all
And the snake island location is consistent with the planes that do have transponders that were flying around afterwards

This would put the aircraft off the coast of Romania, near a hot war zone and in a position to spy on the Russian black sea fleet and report its movements without being in the Ukrainian skies




It certainly does push us towards a hot war incident when the US has its own equipment and/or armed forces in the area, conducting hostile maneuvers against Russian forces. Even if that's just an unarmed spy drone flying in the black sea to locate the russian fleet instead of attacking it directly- it still gives Russian pilots a big reason to down it and make it pretty intolerable to let it stay in the air. That's a significant jump up from "we're arming proxy fighters to kill russians" which was already dangerously close to open war, now its American forces vs Russian forces more directly

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 16 2023 03:54am

International waters anyone can fly. Romania and Turkey also live in the Black Sea, Black Sea is not some internal Russia sea.
In fact NATO MUST observe Russian actions, because Russians could potentially attack NATO. Seen the Russian tv? People talk about nuking UK and so on.
Of course this is 99% just a fantasy of Russian agents, hovewer if there is even only 1% risk it still means we need to monitor Russian actions closely, so that we are warned ahead when Russia starts preparing attack.