Spike in US Air Surveillance in Hours Before Ukrainian Kamikaze Drones Strike Russian Airbase

Ukrainian robot aircraft broke through air defenses and hit a major military airfield in mainland Russia on Thursday morning, following a noticeable spike in American military aircraft activity over the western Black Sea hours before the attack.

The strike hit the Primorsko-Akhtarsky air base in Russia’s southwestern Krasnodar region. The facility is used for aviation basing, storage, preparation, and launch of Russian kamikaze and observation UAVs against Ukrainian targets and supports Russian military aviation operating above Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, according to a Ukrainian General Staff statement.

Russia overnight launched 77 drones into Ukrainian airspace, some from the vicinity of the Primorsko-Akhtarsky airfield, Ukrainian military sources said.

Images and audio reportedly recorded during and after the Ukrainian strike showed fire and smoke at the air base, the sound of low-flying aircraft engines and explosions, and air raid sirens. Official Russian sources said local air defenses shot down 13 incoming drones over the Sea of Azov and another six over dry land.

Initial reports of the attack reached the public space at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday. Geo-location published by the Ukrainian military information platform Realna Vyina showed some detonations in and around support buildings adjacent to the airfield. Ukraine’s 14th Separate UAV Regiment, a special operations unit that conducted most long-range drone strikes in Russia, took credit for the air raid.

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The Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing Krasnodar civilian sources, said locals heard at least 11 explosions near Primorsko-Akhtarsky, but it wasn’t clear whether the blasts were successful drone intercepts or ground impacts.

The 14th Special Operations statement said one hit set a warehouse on fire. The independent Russian news agency Astra reported anti-aircraft crews at the airfield engaged targets.

Kyiv Post review of open-source flight tracking data identified a notable increase in US Air Force and possible US Navy aircraft activity in the airspace above the Black Sea, in the days and hours before the Ukrainian strike.

An unidentified aircraft launching from a US Navy air station in Sigonella, Italy flew to southeast Romania and was present in air space there for almost three hours, turning to head home at 18:30 UTC (20:30 EEST) about one hour before the Ukrainian drones struck Primorsko-Akhtarsky airfield.

In past months and years, the US Air Force has flown Global Hawk surveillance drones out of Signonella into Black Sea air space, at times making passes of the Russia-occupied Crimea peninsula and military facilities in Russia’s Krasnodar and Kuban regions. US Navy Poseidon naval reconnaissance planes likewise have flown repeatedly from Sigonella to patrol above eastern Romania.

A US Air Force KC-135 airborne tanker jet launched from Bucharest flew in proximity to the unidentified plane out of Sigonella for about a half hour before the aircraft began circling over eastern Romania, data from the open-source aircraft tracker platform FlightTracker showed.

The aircraft callsign was not displayed on FlightTracker, only its altitude (33,000 feet MSL) and groundspeed (375 knots) with an International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) airframe-specific identification code (B1E7A1 Mode S squawk) that is a special reserve number not linked to a nation in ICAO’s database. This aircraft was reported as a new Mode S airframe on Jan. 22, 2025, by a plane spotter on X (formerly Twitter), flying at 32,000 feet over the western Mediterranean island of Sardinia.

Although, the Kyiv Post was unable to determine the mystery plane’s type or mission, its flight path was most similar to past flight tracks flown by Poseidon naval reconnaissance planes.

About four hours before those two planes’ operations above eastern Romania, a US Air Force RC-135V Rivet Joint reconnaissance flew well out over the Black Sea and approached to within 130-140 kilometers (81-87 miles) of the southeastern tip of Crimea, the Ukrainian military information platform Krymsky Veter reported.

Open-source data showed the plane was closest to the Russia-controlled short at about 9:45 UTC (11:45 local), some 12 hours before the Ukrainian drones struck, a Kyiv Post check of flight tracking data found.

The Krymsky Veter report said: “The RC-135’s missions are known as Burning Wind or Misty Wind. Its suite of sensors allows it to detect, identify, and locate signals across the electromagnetic spectrum. The collected information can then be distributed to a wide range of users in a variety of formats via a wide range of communications capabilities.”

Wednesday also saw Russian jamming from Crimean ground transmitters of sufficient power to scramble aircraft location signatures in the region by hundreds of kilometers, possibly in an attempt to prevent data collection by the American RC-135 Rivet Joint electronic warfare (EW) surveillance aircraft, the platform said.

Kyiv Post checks of flight tracking data confirmed probable aircraft location anomalies. Like the unidentified plane out of Sigonella, the RC-135V Jake17 aircraft flew in proximity to the US Air Force tanker.

On Tuesday, the Royal Air Force sent a separate Rivet Joint aircraft out over the Black Sea but during that sortie, the aircraft kept a 300+ kilometer (186+ mile) distance from Crimea. British RC-135 reconnaissance flights over the Black Sea have taken place regularly since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, usually about once a week. Prior to early February, the last RC-135 flight registered with open-source tracking platforms took place on Jan. 28, by a Royal Air Force aircraft, Kyiv Post research found.

During some RC-135 missions, NATO fighters, most commonly Royal Air Force Tornadoes first appearing on radars in the vicinity of Mihail Kogălniceanu air base near Constanza Romania, accompany Rivet Joint sorties. Open-source flight trackers showed no NATO fighters in that air space for at least a week.

On Thursday-Monday NATO command dispatched an E-3 Sentry AWACS plane, daily, into air space over eastern Romania. That aircraft’s main role is the identification of air threats like enemy fighters or missiles. All aircraft were NATO-flagged.

The presence of E-3 Sentry aircraft over eastern Romania for four days running, and detectable on open-source flight tracking platforms, is probably unprecedented for the entire Russo-Ukraine war, but may have been linked to a NATO air training exercise over the weekend, Kyiv Post researchers found.

Russia has repeatedly accused NATO states and particularly the US and Great Britain of flying spy aircraft over the western Black Sea to collect hard targeting data for Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Officials in Washington, London and Brussels have said that some reconnaissance data gathered by air assets is shared with Kyiv, but without offering details.