U.S. Navy sub hunter plane circles off Bulgaria after drone strikes

A U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft flew off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast near the ports of Varna and Burgas, a week after Russian drone attacks sank a cargo ship and damaged another in the area, flight tracking data shows.

Tracking data published by the flight monitoring Itamilradar, using Flightradar24 data, shows the Boeing P-8A crossing Bulgaria from the west near Shumen, passing over the Varna area and heading out to sea, then turning south and circling off Burgas, inside the Black Sea waters bordering Bulgaria and Turkey. The aircraft flew at low altitude and that it was the first such U.S. patrol over that part of the Black Sea in several months.

The P-8A is the U.S. Navy’s main submarine-hunting and maritime surveillance aircraft, based on the Boeing 737. It carries radar that can pick out small boats on the surface, electro-optical and infrared cameras, and sonobuoys it can drop into the water to listen for submarines. Flying low lets crews identify small objects such as drone boats more easily.

The flight follows a string of attacks on merchant shipping off Bulgaria. Early on Oct. 13, drones hit two cargo ships in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone. One of them sank off Krapets in the north of the country near the Romanian border, and Bulgarian officials said 11 crew members were missing. The second, the Ukrainian-owned, Maltese-flagged Chelsea 3, was damaged about 15 to 18 nautical miles off the coast south of Varna, and all 15 of its crew were rescued and taken to Varna.

The crew of the Chelsea 3 said the ship was attacked by three drones. Bulgarian reports described them as aerial drones, while Russian Telegram channels published images of a mark on the ship’s hull that they said was left by an uncrewed surface vessel, or drone boat. It has not been officially established what type of drone struck the ship or where it was launched from.

A week earlier, on Oct. 6, drone attacks in the same zone sank the cargo ship Alfa Watan, with all of its crew believed lost, and badly damaged a second vessel whose crew was rescued.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said there was no clear evidence of who carried out the attacks, but that “logic indicates that the result is in favour of the Russian Federation.” He called the latest strike “absolutely unacceptable,” said Bulgaria would summon the Russian ambassador, and asked allies to help identify where the drones came from and to strengthen air and sea surveillance off the coast. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance would adjust its defenses as needed.

Bulgaria’s neighbor Romania has dealt with similar threats this year. In August, a Romanian F-16 opened fire with its cannon on a maritime drone carrying explosives that was found drifting several hundred meters from the Neptun Deep offshore gas platform, about 80 nautical miles east of Constanța, The Defence Blog reported. Romanian F-16s have also shot down aerial drones over the Danube Delta, and in June a sea drone blew up in the port of Constanța, Romania’s largest.