When Hawkins would say that the Uranus has a tribe made of icecrystals glowing in all colors and pray to chickens like to gods you would give him more credibility then to some guy who yells the same crap on the streets?
That is the problem people rather go for their own opinion who to give credit then rather to check the background of that and the possibilities.
Fact is, Iran had directly seen RQ-170 drones, they examined them first hand for quite a time, they know all interior, they know the entire list of chips that are used, the only factor where they would have problems are software, but again to much trouble they wouldn't have since they hacked it and saftley landed it on their own base via russian equipment.
So we know this, meaning they have all necessary knowledge to reverse engineer it, but the problems come for Iran are that they are sanctioned, their MIC is very limited especially for microchip producement, but they have China and Russia which both don't need to give a **** about sanctions and china has all technologies for microchips delivered freehand from US and EU companies for "globalisation".
The problem remains only domestic MIC production for Iran, they will take another 20 years to have to some degree all necessary industrial production and development facilities, maybe less.
What is today with this drone is it most probably can fly, that is the lowest of their concerns. Flying things are not a hard task, the hard task is to have the quality and processing of software to run it properly but they will have additional support from abroad.
You shouldn't believe like drones are some super duper Wunderwaffe, they are not. Drones are very limited in their capabilities and it is far easier to produce drones then a real fighter jet that also outshadows any drone in their capabilities from flying to the brains (pilot).
The only problem for developing drones is that they cost alot due the high amountof automatisation it needs to not fall from sky or lose control to plattform.
Drones are not a big technology to be used in any major war, only countries without IADS will have problems against such low useful tool.
