The US Department of Defense says it is unlikely that Russia would be able to obtain useful information from the debris of a US military drone that went down in the Black Sea.
Defense Department Press Secretary Patrick Ryder told a news conference on Thursday there are indications that Russia is trying to recover the debris of the MQ-9 Reaper drone.
Ryder went on to say it is very unlikely that Russia would be able to recover "anything useful." He said that the drone crashed in "extremely deep water," and the US took steps to protect information aboard the aircraft.
Ryder also commented on the release of the video that the US says is evidence of a Russian fighter jet colliding with the drone.
He said "Given the reckless and dangerous behavior and to demonstrate publicly what type of actions the Russians had taken, we felt that it was important to provide this imagery."
The US military said that two Russian fighter jets conducted dangerous intercept maneuvers and one of them collided with a US reconnaissance aircraft in airspace above the Black Sea on Tuesday. The US military said it lost control of the drone, and had to ditch it into the sea.