A $13 million Air Force drone crashed in the Mediterranean Sea when its propeller “decoupled” from its engine, an Air Force report on the mishap concluded.

Released Wednesday, the report details how, late last year, the Air Force drone operator controlling the MQ-9A Reaper — who was remotely piloting it from a base in Missouri on the opposite side of the world — quickly realized the unmanned aircraft had suffered a catastrophic engine failure and intentionally ditched it into the sea. The wreckage was not recovered, the report said, leaving few clues to the root cause of the failure, the accident investigation board found.

But the report peels back a window on some unique details of the daily life of “geographically separated” pilots and sensor operators who fly unmanned aircraft for Air

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