Iran Claims Shooting-down of US Spy Plane (UPDATES)
Dec 7th, 2011 | 14 responses
Latest update from the BBC:
The BBC reports that Iranian TV has shown the first video footage of the US drone that Tehran says it downed near the Afghan border.
Images show Iranian military officials inspecting the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which appears to be undamaged.
Iranian officials say its forces electronically hijacked the drone and steered it to the ground.
[:]
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the intact condition of the Sentinel tends to support their claim.
[:]
Pentagon officials have said they are concerned about Iran possibly acquiring information about the technology.
===
The unmanned U.S. drone Iran said on Sunday it had captured was programmed to automatically return to base even if its data link was lost, one key reason that U.S. officials say the drone likely malfunctioned and was not downed by Iranian electronic warfare.
[:]
A U.S. government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plane was on a CIA mission. The CIA and Pentagon both declined to comment on the issue.
[:]
The RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin, was first acknowledged by the U.S. Air Force in December 2009. It has a full-motion video sensor that was used this year by U.S. intelligence to monitor al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan ahead of the raid that killed him.
Former and current military officials familiar with the Sentinel said they were skeptical about Iranian media reports that Iran’s military brought down one of the drones in eastern Iran, especially since Tehran has not released any pictures of the plane.
The aircraft is flown remotely by pilots based in the United States, but is also programmed to autonomously fly back to the base it departed from if its data link with U.S.-based pilots is lost, according to defense analyst Loren Thompson, who is a consultant for Lockheed and other companies.
[:]
The fact that the plane did not return to its base suggests a “catastrophic” technical malfunction, agreed one industry executive familiar with the operation and programming of unmanned aerial vehicles.
[:]
Many classified weapons systems have self-destruction capabilities that can be activated if they fall into enemy hands but it was not immediately clear if that was the case this time.
In this case, the design of the plane and the fact that it had special coatings that made it nearly invisible to radar were already well documented. If it survived a crash, all on-board computer equipment was heavily encrypted.
——
Original Post:
In the wake of the attack on the British embassy in Tehran, now come reports that Iran has shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that allegedly violated Iranian airspace along the country’s eastern border, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The Washington Post:
“An advanced RQ170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran’s armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran’s armed forces,” IRNA quoted the official as saying.
[:]
Iran said in January that two pilotless spy planes it had shot down over its airspace were operated by the United States and offered to put them on public display.
Read more here
UPDATE:
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. surveillance drone that went down in western Afghanistan may be the first time that such an aircraft has fallen into the hands of an enemy.
“U.S. officials acknowledged Sunday that a drone had been lost near the Iranian border, but they declined to say what kind of aircraft was missing,” and say that there is no indication that the drone was brought down by enemy fire.
The Post:
If an RQ-170 drone crashed in Iran, it would mark a significant setback for the U.S. military. The United States has lost less-sophisticated unmanned aircraft in recent years over Iran, but a nearly intact RQ-170 could offer a potential windfall of useful intelligence for the Iranians and their allies.
The aircraft has special coatings and a batwing-like shape that is designed to evade detection by enemy radar. The aircraft could help the Iranians better understand the vulnerabilities of U.S. stealth technology and provide them with clues on how to spot other aircraft, U.S. officials said.
Read more here.
14 Responses to “Iran Claims Shooting-down of US Spy Plane (UPDATES)”
If this “story” is true, I say “GOOD”!!!
I’m sick and tired of this corporate ass-kissing government doing whatever the hell it wants to in other countires, and abusing it’s own hard working citizens……
GOOD! GOOD! GOOD!……..DAMN GOOD!
If Iran discovered the wreckage of a drone that had suffered mechanical problems, gone off course and crashed they would of course claim to have shot it down.
JS
This is a stealth drone. I suspect there is built in redundancy in all critical systems. Now our government and CIA would never invade a countries air space…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_RQ-170_Sentinel
Avionics maybe, but not just simple mechanical failure.
Well Rudi, if it was a deliberate invasion of Iran’s airspace, they would have been within their rights to shoot it down.
From the AP:
The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said in a statement the aircraft may be an American drone that its operators lost contact with last week while it was flying a mission over neighboring western Afghanistan.
A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the incident, said the U.S. HAD “absolutely no indication” that the drone was shot down.
It was unmanned…who cares? I am going to just assume the things self-destruct when they lose contact and crash.
You will when the next military appropriation bill comes down the pipe.
This little toy is now being sent to some lab where some bright young kids will attempt to reverse engineering it, that failing they will attempt to hack it, that failing they will attempt to figure a way to make the stealth less stealthy. Don’t be shocked if they come up with a fifty dollar hack to render ineffective a three to four million toy which will cost a few hundred Grants to protect from the fifty dollar hack.
I agree with QF.
If this was indeed the highly advanced and classified RQ170, it is a big blow to our drones program and, yes, the counter-counter- measures “game” is very complex — and expensive.
Umm…so the military would not built in a self-destruct mode? Come on, they would do it for that very reason. You better believe every piece of electronics on that thing was fried before it ever hit the ground.
Granted I could be wrong…a lot of incompetence floating around these days.
Drones have been lost and will be lost, oftentimes because of failure of the data links. Sometimes in such cases fighters have been scrambled to destroy the platform before it strays into enemy territory. In this case the drone was already over enemy territory The question here –one which only DoD and the manufacturers know the answer to — is whether, when all command and control to the drone fails and it can not be shot down or otherwise destroyed — certain systems can still destroy themselves. In this case, let’s hope so.
If it didn’t happen in this case, I would not chalk it up to “incompetence,” we have not invented a totally “fail-safe” system yet.
This is an Oh Sh-it moment.
A friend of mine at Raytheon tells me this is a BIG deal. Technology lost could spell the end of our military aviation advantage vs any modern Air Force and many not-so-modern.
Rely too much on technology and stuff like this happens.
If it did not self destruct, heads should roll.
I’m sure they are considering Russian or Chinese electronic espionage in an attempt to steal the aircraft. In anycase details are certainly compromised now. Back to the drawing board with a few more billion dollars. Cut grandma’s Medicare budget. She’s gotta go, we’ve got drones to waste and a military budget to protect.
They are releasing pictures of a completely intact recog plane. Heads better be rolling.
The thing should automatically blowup before hitting the ground…without some sort of almost impossible to crack code to turn off the destruct mechanism before a planned landing.
Unreal