Sydney - Middle East Times Int’l: A Russian fighter jet dumped fuel on an American drone over the Black Sea then collided with it and caused the drone to crash, the US military said, which slammed the manoeuvre as “reckless”.

US European Command said two Russian Su-27 fighters intercepted the unmanned MQ-9 Reaper over international waters and one clipped its propeller.

“Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner,” it said.

Moscow denied causing the crash of the drone, which the Pentagon said was on a routine ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) mission.

“As a result of a sharp manoeuvre... the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle entered an uncontrolled flight with loss of altitude and collided with the surface of the water,” the Russian Defence Ministry said, adding that the two Russian jets had no contact with the US aircraft and did not use their weapons.

The US State Department said it had summoned Russia’s ambassador to protest.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby later said, “obviously, we refute the Russians’ denial” and added that the United States is trying to prevent the fallen drone from getting into the wrong hands.

“Without getting into too much detail, what I can say is that we’ve taken steps to protect our equities with respect to that particular drone -– that particular aircraft,” Kirby said.

“We obviously don’t want to see anybody getting their hands on it beyond us.”

Russian intercepts over the Black Sea are common, Kirby said, but this one “is noteworthy because of how unsafe and unprofessional it was, indeed reckless that it was”.

NATO diplomats in Brussels confirmed the incident but did not expect it to immediately escalate into a further confrontation.

Reapers can be armed with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs and fly for more than 1770 kilometres at altitudes of up to 15,000 metres, according to the US Air Force.