The US Is Flying a Fleet of Every Type of Spy Plane It Has to Feed Ukraine Intelligence

Current and former U.S. officials knowledgeable about the operations told The Intercept that the U.S. military has deployed extensive ISR, or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, assets to countries neighboring Ukraine to monitor developments within the embattled nation.

The sophisticated intelligence regime requires the Biden administration to walk a fine line in which one wrong step could spell disaster: providing Ukraine with as much assistance as possible without becoming an active participant in the war and risking a direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. The balance relies on the assumption that Russia will recognize and respect the United States’s compliance with its self-imposed rules.

The assets are largely aircraft tasked with flying along the borders between Ukraine and its NATO-allied neighbors, which must be careful not to cross into Ukrainian airspace. Capable of peering deep inside the country, the aircraft glean intelligence that is then passed onto the Ukrainians, according to two former U.S. officials knowledgeable about current operations.

The aircraft include MQ-9 “Reaper” drones, Boeing RC-135 “Rivet Joints,” and Boeing E-3 Sentry “AWACS,” which have been used to eavesdrop on communications and collect imagery intelligence, according to one of the former officials, a retired CIA officer. A current U.S. Army signals intelligence officer said that the U.S. had deployed many of the ISR assets to neighboring countries in February, following Russia’s massive troop buildup along the Ukrainian border. Open-source flight data shows the same models of aircraft positioned over Poland, Romania, and the Black Sea.

Crossing into Ukrainian airspace could turn the United States into a direct combatant in the conflict, heightening the risk of a nuclear confrontation. The same risk surrounds the provision of certain kinds of intelligence. According to the former CIA official, the United States is only providing “finished” intelligence, meaning that it has already been processed by the U.S., as opposed to “raw” intelligence, like real-time video feeds or communications intercepts. [Intel that has been decluttered and is therefore that much more useful and actionable.]