Canada should call foul on dodgy drone narrative

OTTAWA—On March 14, Russian fighter jets intercepted a United States military drone over the Black Sea, off the coast of Crimea. According to U.S. officials and the video footage released by the Pentagon, the Russian pilots aggressively buzzed the drone and twice doused it with aviation fuel. The U.S. claims that during one of the close encounters, the Russians actually made contact with the drone, damaging the propeller. After determining that the drone was no longer “flyable,” the American military remotely scrubbed any sensitive data from the drone’s software and then deliberately crashed the aircraft into the sea. The Russian Ministry of Defence has denied the allegation that its pilots deliberately damaged the U.S., drone but have also vowed to recover the wreckage. The U.S. talking points on this are that it was an unprovoked act of aggression by the Russian air force against an American observation drone, operating in international airspace. Naturally, such an incident of martial provocation by Russia against the U.S. has sent military analysts spinning on the fear of a nuclear conflagration. While one can understand that the Americans would try to cover their embarrassment with the claim that they are the innocent victims of another crazy Russian provocation, it is difficult to fathom why Canadian media outlets unquestionably parrot the same U.S. narrative. To begin with, it has been widely reported that the downed drone was a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper. While it can indeed collect intelligence, the Reaper—as in “Grim Reaper”—is designated as a “hunter-killer” unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). In describing the newly acquired MQ-9 Reapers in 2006, then-U.S. air force chief of staff General T. Michael Moseley said, “We’ve moved from using UAVs primarily in the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles before Operation Iraqi Freedom, to a true hunter-killer role with the Reaper.” Hunting and killing are what the Reaper does best, with a lethal payload of Hellfire missiles. According to the sales brochure, the Reaper is capable of “automatic detection of threats and can track 12 moving targets at once, and has the ability to ‘super ripple’ fire misses within 0.32 seconds of each other.” The U.S. military has never hidden the fact that the Reaper is an airborne execution machine. On July 12, 2022, the Pentagon trumpeted the death of one Maher al-Agal in Syria. According to CIA sources, al-Agal was one of the top five leaders of the fanatical Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) movement. This extrajudicial killing came about thanks to a pair of Hellfire missiles fired by a U.S. air force Reaper. Just a couple of weeks later, on July 31, 2022, Ayman al-Zawahiri bit the dust in Kabul, Afghanistan. As a senior leader of the notorious al-Qaida terrorist organization, al-Zawahiri was alleged to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks against the U.S. Fittingly, then, it was a made-in-America hunter-killer Reaper drone that ended al-Zawahiri’s life with a couple of Hellfires. To reduce any collateral damage, the Americans reportedly used Hellfire R9Xs, which kill the target on impact with blades rather than an explosion. But I digress. Suffice it to say that the Reaper is far more lethal than a simple observation drone. Which brings us to the location of Russia’s alleged provocation off the coast of Crimea in the Black Sea. Tensions have been heightened in this region since Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the U.S. turned up the heat with an increase in surveillance flights in the vicinity of Crimea. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the surveillance patrols along the conflict zone are used to gather information which helps improve security for Europe and supports “allied partners.” Included in that support to “allied partners” would be the provision of the intelligence that allowed the Ukrainian armed forces to sink the Russian navy flagship Moskva. On the flip side of this equation, we had the almost-farcical incident involving an alleged Chinese spy balloon that flew over Canada and the U.S. at the end of January. It took a week to cross America, and when it was safely off the Atlantic coast, but still in U.S. airspace, the Pentagon exercised its legal right to blow it out of the sky. The U.S. navy has since recovered the wreckage, but to date has not offered any proof that this was anything but what China claimed it to be: a high-altitude weather balloon that was blown off course. However, in the days following this incident, the U.S. scrambled fighter jets to blow at least three more unidentified aircraft from North American airspace. This, we are told, is the inherent legal right of any follower of the rules-based international order. As such, America cannot cry victim if China floats an empty balloon through their airspace and then be surprised when the Russian air force engages a hunter-killer Reaper drone on the edge of an active conflict zone. Given that we all share the same planet, as Canadians, we can chastise our American allies for dangerously provoking a nuclear-armed Russia on their own doorstep. Scott Taylor is the editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. The Hill Times