U.S. Military Sources: Iran Has Missing U.S. Drone

Iran appears to be in possession of one of America's most sophisticated weapons, a super-secret spy plane whose stealth technology is the same as the drone used to monitor the compound during the raid that killed Usama bin Laden, U.S. military sources told Fox News on Monday. Military sources confirmed that the Iranians have the RQ-170 drone, which is so advanced that the U.S. Air Force has not distributed even a photo of it. However, they did not say that the Iranians shot down the spy plane, as was reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

US Navy's 'UFO-Like' Stealth Drone Takes Flight IRNA quoted an unidentified Iranian military official saying Sunday that the spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces and suffered minor damage.. The official also warned of strong and crushing response to any violations of the country's airspace by American drone aircraft.

Read more: www.foxnews.com...

And so it starts, its interesting that this is on fox news. I hope that nothing serious comes of this, although it does seem that the war drums are beating. Sorry to post and run but I have work...

Totally contradicting the general Western media response to Iran's claims.

Excellent.

(Don't you just love it when your gut instinct is right?)

Oh brother. I can't help laugh at this because the only alternative is to cry. When we aren't outright selling our highest national secrets, we're flying them in enemy airspace for them to pluck out of the air and take apart to examine like a big sale item at K-mart. I believe there was a time when we wouldn't risk the MOST sensitive things in a hostile sky we didn't control for precisely THIS REASON.

So...aside from the geopolitical egg shower Obama is taking right about now for sheer stupidity, I wonder how many 10's of billions..or more..just got flushed down the crapper because we just *HAD* to use our super-secret toy over a *VERY* hostile nation that is not relegated to the technology of cavemen.

Gee whiz...Iran REALLY CAN slap down our most advanced gizmos. Perhaps this is a lesson our Great Leader should take very strongly to heart BEFORE we get into a shooting war and discover this isn't the only tragic miscalculation we've made with regard to the capabilities of Iran.

..........What gives me a sick feeling almost to the point of nausea is the idea this remote controlled toy used REAL stealth technology from our primary front line systems. If that's the case...we didn't lose 10's of billions, we've lost HUNDREDS of billions worth of technological advantage and ability to win a war...thanks to some IDIOT with a rank and the moron in elected office who told them to do it.

Is there any other source than FOX? I don't trust FOX for any news.

2nd.

reply to post by sir_slide


Kind of one of those "Doh !!!" moments, eh?

"Mr President, Iran has just acquired some of our super-secret tech!"

Obama...

if you're going to fly your stuff over hostile areas then you're going to expect it to get caught by them via being shot down or just going mamaries skyward due to a technical problem so while they may have the technical spec's which probably wont be too troublesome i'd imagine its the reverse engineering of the software and i'm sure theres a few fail safes built into the system so they cant just spend a few hours and work everything out

reply to post by Trolloks
This is a video clip from CBC news on the subject but it states that NATO denies it happened .. www.cbc.ca...#/News/1221258968/ID=2173690507

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Hey smart guys the whole point of building these super stealthy spy drones is to spy in hostile territories. Why would you build it to only fly it in safe zones. This is a risk you run. This is one drone they got out of how many flights? That's right you don't know, and if this one didn't fail or get shot down you still wouldn't know. Knowledge is power in any conflict and the more you get from whatever means gives you the advantage.

reply to post by sir_slide


Maybe it wasn't shot down....

Another possibility is that “lost control” is another way of saying hijacked. In other words, U.S. remote pilots lost control as Iranians took control. There maybe a connection with another drone story — this one about a drone that Israel lost. Late last month,

Richard Silverstein “revealed” that an Israeli drone brought down over Southern Lebanon by Hezbollah had been booby-trapped and later unwittingly taken to a weapons depot where it was remotely detonated. It was a story so implausible that it seemed like Israeli intelligence could only feed it to a scoop-hungry blogger since most journalists simply wouldn’t take it seriously.

If the story was indeed an Israeli fabrication then it was probably concocted in order to cover up a much more important story: that Hezbollah has managed to refine its tools of electronic warfare to a point that puts in jeopardy all of Israel’s drone missions over Lebanon. If that was the case this would have serious consequences since it is widely assumed that in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, reprisal attacks on Israel from Lebanon would swiftly follow.

In such a situation, Israel could not afford to have lost one of its most valuable intelligence gathering tools — the means on which it might depend to prevent missile strikes on Tel Aviv. In other words, if Israel’s ability to defend itself from attacks from Lebanon has been significantly degraded, it might need to be a bit more cautious about threatening to attack Iran. Israel is flying less sophisticated drones than the RQ-170, but even so, whatever skills Hezbollah has been acquiring in its counter-drone operations it has very likely been sharing with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Might this provide part of the explanation about how the U.S. lost and Iran found a drone that supposedly went “missing”?

warincontext.org...

So, has it been shipped off to china yet for deconstruction and mass production ?

reply to post by Max_TO


China already has its own Drone fleet in production.

I wonder how an American administration will react when one appears on the borders............

This isn't anything really big. As advanced as the drone may or may not be, it was also built with the expectation that one would eventually be shot down. Then there is the matter of reverse engineering the technology, which isn't as easy as one would think. Let alone it is time consuming and that is just the physical part of it, not even touching on the software and computerized flight systems that they would have to reverse engineer. So even if it were intact enough to be useful, currently it is just one in their possession. A cause for caution and evaluation to be sure but we won't be seeing any Iranian made drones anytime soon. They are still trying to figure out the F-14 from the ones we sold them.

Originally posted by MrStyx
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

Hey smart guys the whole point of building these super stealthy spy drones is to spy in hostile territories. Why would you build it to only fly it in safe zones. This is a risk you run. This is one drone they got out of how many flights? That's right you don't know, and if this one didn't fail or get shot down you still wouldn't know. Knowledge is power in any conflict and the more you get from whatever means gives you the advantage.

Indeed.. You're right about that and therein lies one of the most troublesome paradoxes of modern military technology. There definitely comes a point where a weapons system is SO advanced it literally cannot be risked in battle outside of the most extreme cases.

That super stealth helicopter we lost in Pakistan is one example. I'd love to know what this drone was looking at that was worth losing it for, but by descriptions of it's level of technology, it could be another example...although I sure hope not. The story suggests they may have taken this puppy intact and functional. What a nightmare. At least the only thing really useful out of Pakistan was material science related to the skin of the helicopter. In THIS case, they may have gotten the whole shabang.

I have a real solution to the whole problem of using technology in war that is too advanced to lose to the enemy. Lets stop fighting wars entirely where the stakes aren't literally tied to our own national survival. That seems to be the rule of thumb for the over 99.9% of the planet. It should be a decent way to handle ourselves. In fact, it WAS how we handled ourselves until 9/11.

reply to post by KeliOnyx


en.wikipedia.org...

Iran isn't exactly technologically illiterate.

Originally posted by juveous
reply to post by KeliOnyx

 

en.wikipedia.org...

Iran isn't exactly technologically illiterate.

No..but the Russian and Chinese advisers they have helping them sure are. I'll bet parts of that drone are already in labs far from the borders of Iran.

Originally posted by juveous
reply to post by KeliOnyx

 

en.wikipedia.org...

Iran isn't exactly technologically illiterate.

Exactly. Didn't Bomber Harris say during WW2 that when two sides are pretty closely matched with technology, don't ever expect one to out-do the other for very long. One side will always figure out a way to counter the other.

The US has stealthy drones. Iran gets one. The US develops something better. Yin and Yang.

reply to post by buni11687


For me it's more just about Iran shooting down/taking control of US drone that was monitoring their country. It is interesting that NATO have denied it and the US were not sure if they had lost it or whatever, but now Iran, according to US military sources have shot it down/taken control of it, and it is now in their possession. This may just be a way to amp up the war rhetoric although if this situation was reversed you can sure bet that the west would be screaming bloody murder.

For me it's not so much that Iran may have this high tech drone, more that they have shot down a US aircraft, which in US terms is a call for war, so it's a bit worrying watching this unfold, it seems like the first stage of something terrible.

Thanks for all the replies by the way people, thought it deserved a bit of attention this morning

reply to post by Trolloks


Well it IS interesting that it is on Fox, as fox news is not news, its lies, so taking that into account you can see the war rhetoric amping up, it's more about where it's coming from, which is what makes it interesting

Originally posted by jerico65

Originally posted by juveous
reply to post by KeliOnyx

 

en.wikipedia.org...

Iran isn't exactly technologically illiterate.

The US has stealthy drones. Iran gets one. The US develops something better. Yin and Yang.

which is, at it's core, the problem that this all surrounds.

America has nukes, Iran supposedly wants to aquire one.