American RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drones may have conducted at least nine sorties since September 2022 to gather intelligence on Russian forces occupying Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and other areas in the Black Sea region, according to a leaked U.S. military document.
If true, this would be a rare insight into the continued operational use of these drones, also nicknamed Wraiths, which remain shrouded in secrecy nearly 15 years after the U.S. military officially acknowledged their existence.
French-language website Zone Militaire was among the first to report on the document in question, which is among those leaked online by Airman 1st Class Jack Douglas Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Overall, it provides details about U.S. and NATO aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activity in the Black Sea region between September 2022 and February 2023.
The War Zone has been unable to definitively and independently verify the authenticity of the document mentioning the RQ-170 flights. At least some of the materials Teixeira leaked look to have been doctored, as well. If the ISR document is legitimate, it is still unknown whether RQ-170 flights are still ongoing in the region or where they are being conducted from.
“As a matter of policy and operational security, we will not comment on operational details of ISR assets,” a spokesperson for U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), the service’s top command in the region, said in response to queries about the document. “However, routine ISR flights support a range of U.S. national, Allied and Partner objectives.”
There are certainly good reasons why the U.S. military would employ RQ-170s in this context, even to carry out ISR sorties from a stand-off range in international airspace over the Black Sea. The Air Force is understood to have between 20 and 30 of these drones in total. The service has only ever confirmed that two units, the 30th and 44th Reconnaissance Squadrons, operate them. Their main base of operations has long been at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, but other locations have hosted them, at least in the past.
Source: The Drive/Warzone