Iranian RQ-170?

Well the Iranian DoD is telling the rest of the world that it has successfully reversed engineered the downed RQ-170 and built their own. It is interesting they chose to put there's right next to the original one that crashed several years ago.
I wonder if we will get to see a remote controlled model or it flying around and some bad Photoshop images of it in the air like Iran did with the F-313?



Aviationist

www.tasnimnews.com...

a reply to: Sammamishman

The general shape doesn't worry me much, it's the electronics and stuff on board that is hard as hell to make work again. Yeah, the shape is important, but the electronics on some of these new UAVs is mind blowing.

Wasn't there a report a while back stating the Chinese had gone and taken a look at these? They probably are far more capable of reverse engineering the electronics than Iran, and have sold stuff to Iran in the past. So i'm assuming would be open to working with them?

a reply to: solidshot

There is a Chinese UAV believed to be based on the RQ-170 that Iran has. There are pictures that allegedly show an assembly line type facility with RQ-170 looking aircraft on it, in China.

theaviationist.com...

Fortunately the Sentinel doen't have the cutting edge stuff that others do.

I'd certainly believe China could duplicate the Sentinel before Iran could. Not that Iranians are somehow inferior... They absolutely are not and have one of the better educated societies around. They do have some issues with lack of specific things from sanctions and access to Western resources. It's a Western aircraft they're trying to reproduce, so that means everything in this case.

China, on the other hand, probably had blueprints for the Sentinel by the time the first one took off from a US runway.

originally posted by: Sammamishman
Well the Iranian DoD is telling the rest of the world that it has successfully reversed engineered the downed RQ-170 and built their own. It is interesting they chose to put there's right next to the original one that crashed several years ago.
I wonder if we will get to see a remote controlled model or it flying around and some bad Photoshop images of it in the air like Iran did with the F-313?

Pretty bad CG job, but anyhow the level of comprehension that they are using this propaganda towards is extremely low. One of my favorites is their Mass production of Scan Eagle....lol

originally posted by: Zaphod58
The general shape doesn't worry me much, it's the electronics and stuff on board that is hard as hell to make work again. Yeah, the shape is important, but the electronics on some of these new UAVs is mind blowing.

The inside is what it is all about. Also you just do not create a ground control station, GUI and autopilot from scratch to control it.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Of course not, but China is pretty good at figuring these things out with what they have. With them having a pretty advanced UAV program already it won't take long for them to work up a Ground Control Interface to use with the copied airframe.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

China probably built the circuits in the original lol. China is not that far behind when it comes to computers and circuits. It is only a matter of having applied the knowledge they have like we do.

a reply to: Xeven

China probably built the circuits in the original lol.

I was starting to consider that when it hit me.... You know? You're probably 100% correct. They likely did.

Heck of a way to run a military, isn't it? (facepalm)

So they have a uav that is probably at least two generations behind what we actually have flying. And I could almost bet that the US knows how to detect these RQ-170s before they even left groom lake.

a reply to: boomer135

Not to mention the tech that those new ones have that makes the Sentinel look like a P-51.

God id love to see the p51 overflying me.....rq170 not so much.....love that Merlin snarl....

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: boomer135

Not to mention the tech that those new ones have that makes the Sentinel look like a P-51.

thats what i was thinking, this things gotta be some BS if we let it land intact without shoving a cruise missile right up its exhaust pipe.

what better way to really flub up a military then get them all over the nuts of some bygone mistake from area 51? takes me back to annie jacobsens area 51 book and how they were using the tarps on the runways at groom lake cut into all sorts of exotic shapes so it left big weird heat signatures for russian thermal satellites, musta been some serious head scratching lol.

id be willing to bet the RQ-170 was one of our more face palm designs. like they fold up on take off or something or they get really really bad gas millage or whatever lol. i just got a feeling that we got them really chasing their tail on that one. if it was anything really worth saving it woulda gotten vaporized long before someone could of ever reverse engineered it, right?

a reply to: mindseye1609

It was a filler. That's why there were only something like 20 bought. They had others that were coming out, but weren't ready yet, and had a need to fill, so they bought the Sentinel to fill it.

a reply to: Sammamishman

I think you should have added that it was the Dear Leader of North Korea who built the first one himself by hand and it was the U.S. who reversed engineered it from them.

Tylor rogoways websit aviationintel.com has an excellent write up of how the RQ-170 came to be with the history of the jets we know or speculate are out there. Including what zaph says which it is a filler for its big brothers development.

a reply to: boomer135

aviationintel.com...

aviationintel.com...

a reply to: rjbaggins

Oh yeah, I forgot that....

a reply to: Zaphod58

Very true, it is the sophistication of the electronics inside and the coating on the outside that make the difference in a stealth aircraft. Shape helps but it is only one piece of the puzzle.