More Asymmetry From Russia?

When the question first came up of a possible asymmetrical response by Russia to America’s escalation of long range attacks into Russia, one of the possible options we discussed was an attack on US drones over the Black Sea, which are used to help target Russian assets. Today Yves Smith, at the end of a long article,

The Cautious US Escalation Against Russia Is Developing Not Necessarily to US Advantage

mentions the possibility that some action of that sort may have already occurred. I had seen the puzzled tweets that various parties had put out over the incident that is described by Simplicius in this quote. Check this out:

Another line of response is for Russia to interfere with surveillance of the Black Sea, which would severely curtail Ukraine/NATO efforts to attack targets in Crimea and Russian ships in the Black Sea. These strikes depend on precision targeting data. Some Russia friendly commentators suggested Russia might go so far as to shoot down Reaper drones and harass surveillance planes.

Both Simplicius and Alexander Mercoursis described a possible electronic warfare attack instead. From Simplicius on June 5:

After several new persisting rumors that Russia intends to take action against NATO’s Black Sea surveillance drones, today an interestingly ‘anomalous’ incident occurred. The American RQ-4B Global Hawk was said to have disappeared from radars, spurring headlines that it was shot down, but soon after reappeared—seemingly indicating it had turned off its transponders at a certain point near Crimea:

However, that’s when things got even stranger. Amid other rumors that it was ‘jammed’ and even sent out an SOS signal of malfunction, the RQ-4 immediately flew back to Romania and did several circles—itself a non-standard action. Then it continued to the Black Sea again, but this time did its tracks much further south than usual, near Turkey’s coast.

The obvious conjecture would be that—for now—Russia has resorted to messing with it electronically. The operators first panicked and took it to the safety of NATO airspace to make sure all systems were nominal [sic], then upon return they flew it out of Russian EW range for the remainder of the flight. That’s my “educated guess” as to what could have happened, and I would assume it would serve as ‘warning’ to the U.S.

So the US and its allies have again been warned against trying to bluff with a weak hand. Have they finally learned their lesson?