For months now, Ukraine has been asking the US to supply powerful MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, but Washington has held back.
The Gray Eagles can fly for about 30 hours and are capable of carrying powerful Hellfire Missiles, giving Ukraine the ability to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.
Media reports have said that the US is concerned with the risk of the Gray Eagles escalating the war, but the main concern seems to be the possibility that sensitive technology in components of the drones could end up in Russia’s hands.
With this concern in mind, the US is considering altering Gray Eagles so that if Ukraine loses them on the battlefield, it doesn’t pose as much of a risk. “There are specific and very technical tweaks and neutering that can be done to these that may make it possible in the nearer term,” a congressional official told CNN.
The congressional source said that such alterations take time. A US official said that the US Army is leading the effort to study what changes need to be made to the Gray Eagles, which are made by General Atomics.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Biden administration has decided not to send the Gray Eagles over fear that it would signal to Moscow the US is encouraging Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia. But a US and Ukrainian official told CNN that providing the drones has not been ruled out.
“the Biden administration has decided not to send the Gray Eagles over fear that it would signal to Moscow the US is encouraging Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia.” That is the problem with Biden administration, always afraid of Russia reactions. So as a result Russia gets to define the parameters of the war.
The real problem is that the Biden administration isn’t sufficiently afraid of Russian reactions. Dancing (awkwardly in this case) on the edge of the abyss should be tempered with a healthy dose of fear.
Fortunately for the world, Russia hasn’t so far responded to the endless provocation and prolongation on the part of US-NATO by escalating in a major way. So far.
Why should he be? The action is taking place over there.
At the moment.
Yes, Biden is using Ukraine “like flies to little children who kill them for sport”; and, playing Russian roulette first with Europe (“F the EU”) … and all the rest of us. There is of course a fixed limit to success, growing more tenuous as the clock ticks the empty chambers. The institutional corruption of our political class (which after all represents the establishment as a whole) beggars historical precedent -far, far beyond that of WWI- types so morally defective it’s hard to believe we share the same species, not a single one among them calling a halt.
The man veered into senility sometime last year AFAICT.
Of course Russia defines the parameters of the war. If US was at war with Canada and Russia and China supplied weapons to Canada, US would define parameters.
Some Russian courses of action are really really bad, so yes while diminished they are a superpower and we should fear their reactions. I would imagine they could geo-fence these drones.
Putin counts on fear in his enemies. The way to counter that is too put fear in him. Let him worried that these drones count strike at Russia proper. Simply don’t let him define the “sand box”.
So does America , America will fight any war as long as the other side dosen`t have air defence capeabilities like state of the art fighters / ground to air missiles ect ect , having said that they still can`t win a war.
More likely the Ukrainians will fence them.
figurehead biden can say whatever he wants to say but in the long run uncle sam itself has the last word, and most likely uncle sam is not afraid of any russian reactions.
Who is uncle sam? I never voted for him, did you?
i voted for Howard The Duck. who did you vote for?
Too bad you don’t live on your own planet. Then you could take chances only with yourself and leave the remainder of humanity free to pursue sane goals.
Virtue signaling. Nothing more. That worthless junk will get blown up before they unpack it. May as well blow it up at home and save some money on shipping.
Unfortunately, such alterations likely take more time than USUKNATO has available.
The US bombing Russian cities would hugely backfire on the US. If these US made drones, using US surveillance resources, bombed Moscow, the odds of the US dealing with how to react to the bombing of one or more US cities is 100 percent.
My vote is to take these off the table.
Giving liar Zelininski Hellfire missiles, with any technology, is an extremely dangerous idea.
And here they wanted to avoid a WW3. Morons.