The facts about the downing of the U.S. Reaper drone are still emerging, and many relevant specifics are yet to become public, but as we attempt to get our bearings it is worth beginning with applied history. Applied historians ask: have we ever seen anything like this before?
Five cases that are similar in relevant respects are worth recalling: the 2019 shootdown and capture of a U.S. Global Hawk drone by Iran, the collision with a Chinese fighter that forced an EP-3 spy plane to land in Hainan in 2001, the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo (a spy ship) in 1968, and two U.S. U-2 overflights of enemy territory during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In each case, the key questions are: what happened? What did the parties say about where the aircraft was? And how did the United States respond? Läs artikel