On February 5, 2025, a US military aircraft collected intelligence in occupied Crimea for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Previously, the US had only used drones for this purpose, Newsweek reported, suggesting that this could indicate a bolder approach to war by the Pentagon under President Donald Trump.As the publication notes, the US Air Force sent reconnaissance aircraft to the Black Sea from allied bases in Europe until 2022 to monitor military movements in Crimea. However, after the start of a full-scale war, the crew flights were replaced by drone flights, supposedly for the safety of American military personnel.And on February 5, 2025, an American RC-135V Rivet Joint signal and reconnaissance aircraft with the call sign “JAKE17” flew deep into the Black Sea and stayed there for about four hours. It was reported that this was about 100 miles northwest of Sevastopol.The report says Rivet Joints collects, analyzes, and disseminates intelligence data “in near real time” and is crewed by more than 30 people, including electronic warfare officers and intelligence operators. The publication cited the opinion of analyst MeNMyRC, who expressed confidence that such a step “will create additional risk for the crew and the aircraft,” since Russian fighters, like Chinese ones, “were quite aggressive when intercepting and identifying aircraft in international airspace.” The analyst also suggested that the Air Force may have received “new orders” from the Pentagon – “a directive that, if correct, could pose a new challenge to decision makers in the Kremlin, especially if the intense drone strikes continue.”Another US analyst, Blake Allen, called the news “an interesting development”:”The return of US strategic assets to the Black Sea… amid rumors that Western restrictions on deep strikes have been lifted is an interesting development.” In March 2023, the Air Force readjusted its unmanned reconnaissance missions in the Black Sea after a pair of Russian fighter jets intercepted and caused the crash of an MQ-9 drone. U.S. drone flights later resumed, but at a far greater distance from Crimea. Moscow has accused Washington of using the intelligence gathered to provide precise targeting data for Ukrainian missile attacks. The United States is far from the only NATO member keeping tabs on Russian forces in Crimea. The U.K’s Royal Air Force, which has three RC-135W Rivet Joints of its own, routinely conducts reconnaissance in the Black Sea—from a distance.The U.S. Rivet Joint JAKE17, currently deployed to RAF Mildenhall in England, also flies regular missions around the Russian stronghold of Kaliningrad, an exclave on the Baltic Sea.