Drone - USAF Global Hawk operations west of the Black Sea - UAS Vision

Global Hawk Flew over Ukraine with Transponder On

According to reports, a US Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk, took off from the Sigonella air base in Sicily, Italy on Saturday, flying toward Crimea from the west at a height of 15,500 meters. After that, the drone entered Ukrainian airspace along the water in Mykolayiv region, and continued its flight east of Kherson to Melitopol, carrying out reconnaissance north of the Crimean peninsula.

The drone’s 300 km field of view would have easily allowed it to observe eastern Ukrainian territory, including areas of Donbass, where Ukrainian and independence-supporting militia are holding a fragile peace. The aircraft approached 15 km north of the city of Melitopol, 217 km to the west of the demarcation line between Ukrainian troops and Donbass militia.  On its way back to base, the drone flew over the regions of Kirovohrad and Vinnytsia, and then through Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

The Global Hawk (04-2021) popped up on the radars at 50,000 feet, east of Odessa, flying towards Mariupol. Then, the remotely piloted aircraft turned northwest bound before heading towards Sigonella where it arrived after overflying Moldova and Bulgaria. At a certain point the UAS was cruising at 54,000 feet.

The flight path the aircraft followed probably enabled its imagery intelligence (IMINT) sensors to take a look at Russian bases in Crimea as well as gather information about the pro-Russia forces on the ground in the Dombass region of Ukraine.

Strategically based in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, U.S. RQ-4s are regularly tasked with surveillance missions over North Africa, East Europe and Middle East. However, they usually keep a low-profile avoiding to be detected at least by commercial ADS-B receivers like those feeding online flight tracking systems such as Flightradar24.com,PlaneFinder.net or Global ADS Exchange. At least this is what has happened until Oct. 15 when a U.S. Air Force Global Hawk could be tracked online because of its Mode-S transponder while flying over southern Ukraine.

Since January 2015, US drones have carried out regular airborne reconnaissance in areas around Russia in the Black Sea.  Asked to comment about the drone’s likely mission, veteran military analyst Konstantin Sivkov told the independent online newspaper Svobodnaya Pressa that it’s sufficient to consider the RQ-4 Global Hawk’s advanced capabilities, which include photographic and electronic reconnaissance.

“If the drone was really flying along this route, the photographic reconnaissance component drops out, and electronic reconnaissance, meant to find the location, operating conditions and emission characteristics of radar air defense systems is highly likely to have taken place,” the analyst explained.

“The drone’s working transponder, which allowed specialized sites to capture the route of its flight, seems to have been meant to highlight that the drone was carrying out its monitoring mission legally – in the framework of agreements with Ukraine, and without violating Russian airspace.”