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US Stealth UAV RQ-170 downed in IRAN

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So much for logical thinking. The state of <something> is not the same as the cause of that state. Yours is the same mentality that deny 9/11 but quickly jumps to conclusions like this subject because it fits your preconceived notions. If we lost the drone, how is that automatically equal that it was brought down by violent means?

oh my god
Let me dumb it down for you.

The American military forces were drawing up plans to go to Iran and grab the drone, but Iran got to it first (according to the Pentagon). So, if Iran knew where this drone was in some random mountain in the middle of nowhere and was able to get to it within hours, then Iran was almost CERTAINLY tracking it (unless god himself came down and told us where it was). If Iran was tracking it, then chances are that they were responsible for it going down.
 
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So much for logical thinking. The state of <something> is not the same as the cause of that state. Yours is the same mentality that deny 9/11 but quickly jumps to conclusions like this subject because it fits your preconceived notions. If we lost the drone, how is that automatically equal that it was brought down by violent means?



There is no substance in your argument right now.Just point a single post of mine where I was suggesting that Iranians shot down the drone.We are all speculating here based on the media reports. The only thing that matters and that can be tell with certainty is that Iranians have possession of what they are claiming.It doesn't matter if they have it in bits and pieces but they should keep you guys guessing.
 
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YOU bringing up 'common sense' in this debate? :lol: So far there has been nothing but baseless assumptions on your part about Iran's alleged role in this event. And YOU have the gall to bring up 'common sense'?

Let us begin...

In robotics where the device stands with the potential of losing contact with the controller, you must have a 'safe' or 'default' condition available in the event that such a loss does occur. These drones are engineered with such conditions. They are programmed with autonomous flight programming to continue on current heading, or enter an orbit, or self destruct. The last option is least desirable because there could be a chance that contact and control would be reestablished.

Iran did made a similar claim back in July about shooting down a US drone. Nothing to back up that claim. So why should we place anymore credibility on this one?

Cracking into the encrypted communication links in real time is as valid as saying Santa Claus exist. Just as only children believe in Santa Claus, only gullible people like you here would believe that Iran could do such a thing. Equally implausible is the 'virus' tale. If true, then the quickest way to shut down the entire US drone program would be to provide visual confirmation of that takeover of control. The aircraft must be intact and repeatedly flown by Iranian controllers.

And YOU have the gall to bring up 'common sense'...??? :lol:

As I had predicted, the poor creature has started to mumble drivel.
 
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Drone that crashed in Iran may give away U.S. secrets

Drone that crashed in Iran may give away U.S. secrets - latimes.com

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The Sentinel drone has cutting-edge stealth and surveillance technology that other nations could exploit. One of the aircraft crashed in Iran, and a U.S. official says it was on a CIA mission.


Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington&#8212; The radar-evading drone that crash-landed over the weekend in Iran was on a mission for the CIA, according to a senior U.S. official, raising fears that the aircraft's sophisticated technology could be exploited by Tehran or shared with other American rivals.

It was unclear whether the drone's mission took it over Iran or whether it strayed there accidentally because of technical malfunctions, the official said.

Though the drone flight was a CIA operation, U.S. military personnel were involved in flying the aircraft, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy involved.

The jet-powered, bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel drone is considered one of the most advanced in the U.S. arsenal, with stealth technology and sophisticated computer systems that enable it to penetrate deep into hostile territory without detection.

Its capabilities were demonstrated during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, where it provided surveillance of the operation.

The aircraft's full abilities are a closely guarded secret, and the Pentagon has not revealed its price tag, size or top speed. But it has acknowledged this: The Sentinel may now be in Iranian hands.

"I think we're always concerned when there's an aircraft, whether it's manned or unmanned, that we lose, particularly in a place where we're not able to get to it," Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said to reporters Monday.

Peter W. Singer, author of "Wired for War," a book about robotic warfare, said it's not new to have drones downed in enemy territory, but the RQ-170 represents the next generation of drone aircraft.

"It carries a variety of systems that wouldn't be much of a benefit to Iran, but to its allies such as China and Russia, it's a potential gold mine," Singer said.

Other aviation experts weren't so sure.

"I don't think this is a dagger pointed at the heart of democracy," said Loren Thompson, defense policy analyst for the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. "A lot of information about this aircraft was already known by foreign military intelligence officials."

On Sunday, Iran's armed forces said they brought down a Sentinel drone that violated the country's airspace along the eastern border. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's U.S.-led force in neighboring Afghanistan said Iranian authorities might be referring to an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance plane that went missing during a mission in western Afghanistan late last week, but did not confirm what kind of aircraft was downed.

The NATO force's statement was ambiguous about who was flying the aircraft.

"The operators of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status," the statement said.

Spokesmen for the CIA, White House, Pentagon and congressional intelligence oversight committees declined to comment.

Although the Sentinel's capabilities remain largely classified, it is believed to carry the latest in cutting-edge cameras and sensors that can "listen in" on cellphone conversations as it soars miles above the ground or "smell" the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory.

Ever since it was developed at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s famed Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, the Sentinel drone has been cloaked in tight secrecy by the U.S. government. But now the drone that the Iranian military claims to have brought down for invading its airspace might be made far more public than the Pentagon or Lockheed ever intended.

Another U.S. official with access to intelligence said that losing the Sentinel is a major security breach. The official, who was not authorized to publicly speak about the information, wouldn't say how the drone fell into Iranian hands, but confirmed that the downed drone was largely intact.

"It's bad &#8212; they'll have everything" in terms of the secret technology in the aircraft, the official said. "And the Chinese or the Russians will have it too."

Photographs of the Sentinel first surfaced online in 2009 at a remote airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The drone received the nickname "the beast of Kandahar."

The drone resembles a miniature version of the B-2 stealth bomber. The bat-wing design is meant to make it less likely to pop up on enemy radar screens. Also like the B-2 bomber, the Sentinel is thought to have high-tech coatings that act like a sponge to absorb radar waves as they strike the plane.

The Sentinel's design is a quantum leap from the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones well-known for hunting terrorists in the Middle East. Those drones, made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of Poway, Calif., are propeller powered, non-stealthy and not designed to be flown in contested airspace.

The Pentagon first publicly acknowledged the Sentinel's existence in late 2009. The craft is known to be an unarmed spy drone.

Kevin Gambold, director of operations for Unmanned Experts, a British company that specializes in unmanned aerial vehicles, said the Sentinel, carrying an array of classified surveillance systems, would have a self-destruct mechanism to disable or destroy it if operators lost control.

He said it's difficult to believe that Iran could have brought down the aircraft with electronic jamming or by taking the controls through a cyber attack as the country claims it did. "You never say never, but I would be gob-smacked and amazed if they even knew how," Gambold said.

John Bumgarner, chief technical officer for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, an independent nonprofit research institute, said it's technically possible to jam the communication used to control a drone.

But in such cases, the drone should have a fail-safe mechanism that enables it to retrace its flight path and return to the base where it was launched, he said.

The most likely reason that the Sentinel didn't self-destruct or safely return is that it was lost because of an onboard mechanical malfunction, said Thompson of the Lexington Institute.

"That means what the Iranians have is a pile of wreckage &#8212; many small and damaged pieces from which they could glean little in the way of technological insights," he said.

Still, pieces of stealth technology may have found their way into foreign military hands before.

This year, China said it had developed and built a stealth fighter jet, dubbed Chengdu J-20. U.S. military officials believe that the Chinese used technology collected from a F-117 stealth aircraft that was shot down over Serbia in 1999 during the Kosovo war. Chinese agents were said to have purchased parts of the plane, covered in high-tech stealth coating, from local farmers.

"The cat's already out of the bag with stealth technology," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a website for military policy research.

"The materials have already been widely disseminated. One little drone isn't going to make a difference either way."

By: Los Angeles Times
 
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One wonders the US intelligence official confirms that drone is in Iran and is intact but then stops short of telling how it was downed. If it was a simple mechanical glitch then, he would surely point it out since that would make America's position as innocent and understandable.

Also what method of downing the drone is more important than even saying this super secret drone is intact? That is right. That Iranians have the capability to detect, track and down such a sophisticated plane intact on the ground. That method can only be hacking into its control systems using a virus. This mysterious virus had been reported to have infected US drone control systems months back but US experts and DARPA had failed to remove it. Iran has won the day. Now it is official.
 
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gambit,

Where are you? US intelligence official has just confirmed it. The drone is intact. And the technology is being reverse engineered as of now. And you are sleeping?
 
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^^^ Ok, Now Americans have confirmed that they have lost one Drone in Iran. ...
Now its Iranian time to come up and show the proof that they have shot it down... As per Americans the drone stray to Iran adn due to shortage of fuel it crashed in Iran....

 
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^^^ Ok, Now Americans have confirmed that they have lost one Drone in Iran. ...
Now its Iranian time to come up and show the proof that they have shot it down... As per Americans the drone stray to Iran adn due to shortage of fuel it crashed in Iran....

yeap, you Indians are thick

so god came down to earth and told our armed forces that a spy drone has just crashed in some remote mountain and gave our army the coordinates and said go and collect it? BUDDY, Iran must have been tracking the spy drone and knew its pin point location because they collected the drone hours after it crashed.


And why the **** would Iran show the Americans how much of the drone is left intact?
 
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the best example of India anywhere in the world is .. feel understand and accept USA is daddy nothing else more from last 4 years on this forum always Indian defend Americans more thn Americans LOLz

about Drone ... everytime US did mistake

by mistake killed 28 soldiers
by mistake Attack on Iraq
by mistake attack on Afghanistan
by mistake by mistake by mistake...

what a incompetent nation in the world! always give nonsense bullshit justifications on which any person who have some common sense laughing on Americans bullshits!
 
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Pictures? Iran claims something along these lines every few months.

Why would we need drones over Iran when we have spy satellites that can read newspapers from outer space?

already your Pentagon admited

---------- Post added at 04:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:03 PM ----------

FarsNewsAgency -
It is not Iran which is saying this but a military man , the one who is speaking about it.

Iran shoots down US drone
they say it is not damaged much
good for tech

i have a question : how they could take it almost without damage?
they " hacked" it?

yes they jammed it
 
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