Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

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kevinsky18
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Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by kevinsky18 »

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/08/world/meast/iran-drone/

It's hard to belive that this drone was shot out of the sky. There’s only one way to get an airplane onto the ground in one piece or a couple of big pieces and that’s to fly it. Any other way is going to be a smoldering mess that would take months to piece back together.

The US has confirmed they lost it. They also confirm they “lost contact with it.” In other words they didn’t land it. Further if they felt their most top secret weapon was about to fall into the hands of an enemy they certainly would have hit a self destruct.

So who landed this drone? The only explanation I can come up with is that Iran somehow hacked into the drone’s remote control system and took over the drone and flew it to a safe site in Iran.

If that’s the case that was one kick ass move.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by DanWEC »

The drone was programmed to either circle or self-land in the event of a communication loss. Apparently it possibly simply landed on Iranian soil after a comm loss.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Road Trip »

Programmed to self land? Not the usual MO for the U.S. and CIA when it comes to top secret technology. But if that's the case would seem whoever thought of that didn't think about the consequences of such technology getting into the wrong hands. Guess the worry of civilian casualties has outweighed all other national security considerations. China and Iran will be breaking out the Champagne / AK47 (insert appropriate method of celebration) for sure.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Tubthumper »

Iran exhibited the top-secret US stealth drone RQ-170 Sentinel captured on Sunday, Dec. 4. Its almost perfect condition confirmed Tehran's claim that the UAV was downed by a cyber attack, meaning it was not shot down but brought in undamaged by an electronic warfare ambush.
This is a major debacle for the stealth technology the US uses in its warplanes and the drone technology developed by the US and Israel.

The state of the lost UAV refutes the US military contention that the Sentinel's systems malfunctioned. If this had happened, it would have crashed and either been wrecked or damaged. The condition of the RQ-170 intact obliges the US and Israel to make major changes in plans for a potential strike against Iran's nuclear program.

Earlier Thursday, debkafile reported:

The Obama administration's decision after internal debate not to send US commando or air units into Iran to retrieve or destroy the secret RQ-170 stealth drone which fell into Iranian hands has strengthened the hands of the Israeli faction which argues the case for striking Iran's nuclear installations without waiting for the Americans to make their move.

Senior Israeli diplomatic and security officials who followed the discussion in Washington concluded that, by failing to act, the administration has left Iran not only with the secrets of the Sentinel's stealth coating, its sensors and cameras, but also with the data stored in its computer cells on targets marked out by the US and/or Israeli for attack.

debkafile’s military sources say that this knowledge compels the US and Israel to revise their plans of attack for aborting the Iranian nuclear program.
Like every clandestine weapons system, the RQ-170 had a self-destruct mechanism to prevent its secrets spilling out to the enemy in the event of a crash or capture. This did not happen. Tehran was able to claim the spy drone was only slightly damaged when they downed it.
The NATO spokesman claimed control was lost of the US UAV and it went missing, a common occurrence for these unmanned aircraft.
The enigmas surrounding its capture continue to pile up. How did Iran know the drone had entered its airspace? How was it caused to land? Most of all, why did the craft's self-destruct mechanism which is programmed to activate automatically fail to work? And if it malfunctioned, why was it not activated by remote control?

Thursday, Dec. 8, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that from Sunday, Dec. 4, when Tehran announced the stealth drone's capture, the Obama administration weighed sending special commando forces into Iran from bases in Afghanistan to bring the downed aircraft back to Afghanistan or blow it up to destroy the almost intact secret systems - either by a sneak operation or by an air strike.

Iranian officials said the drone was detected near the Iranian town of Kashmar, 200 kilometers from the Afghan border and presumably moved to a military or air base inside the country. The NYT disclosed that the special force would have used "allied agents inside Iran" to hunt down the missing aircraft, the first time Washington has admitted to support from "allied agents" operating covertly in Iran.

In the end, the paper quoted a US official as explaining that the attack option was ruled out "because of the potential it could become a larger incident." If an assault team entered the country, the US "could be accused of an act of war" by Tehran.
The Obama administration's internal discussion on how to handle the loss of the high-value reconnaissance drone was followed tensely in Jerusalem. The decision it took against mounting a mission to recover or destroy the top-secret Sentinel was perceived in Israel as symptomatic of a wider decision to call off the covert war America has been conducting for some months against Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb – at least until the damage caused by RQ-170 incident is fully assessed.
A senior Israeli security official had this to say: “Everything that’s happened around the RQ-170 shows that when it comes to Iran and its nuclear program, the Obama administration and Israel have different objectives. On this issue, each country needs to go its own way.”
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Expat »

I would bet a few spies are studying it now.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Expat »

There is no need for stealth technology in Afghanistan. Period. The country is a friendly one, as far as we know. Anyone who think stealth drones are needed in Af is seriously misinformed.
They only reason this thingh was flying was to spy on Iran.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by SeptRepair »

Road Trip wrote: China and Iran will be breaking out the Champagne / AK47 (insert appropriate method of celebration) for sure.
Or maybe hanging their heads in shame that they are so intellectually inferior that need to resort to stealing others designs instead of coming up with their own. I know people will chime in it wasn't stolen but acquired from Iranian airspace, but you get my drift.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Expat »

Calling people intellectually inferior is a bit strong... :roll:
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Post by Beefitarian »

Agreed. It's not like they're Canadian and can't even copy stealth drones and F-35s.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by DanWEC »

I'm searching for the reference, but the US administration flatly denies that the drone was brought down through an electronic attack.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by iflyforpie »

kevinsky18 wrote: It's hard to belive that this drone was shot out of the sky. There’s only one way to get an airplane onto the ground in one piece or a couple of big pieces and that’s to fly it. Any other way is going to be a smoldering mess that would take months to piece back together.

The US has confirmed they lost it. They also confirm they “lost contact with it.” In other words they didn’t land it. Further if they felt their most top secret weapon was about to fall into the hands of an enemy they certainly would have hit a self destruct.

So who landed this drone? The only explanation I can come up with is that Iran somehow hacked into the drone’s remote control system and took over the drone and flew it to a safe site in Iran.
Why do you find it so hard to believe? The Germans captured intact (or mostly intact) B17s during the war that landed after their crews bailed out. They were repaired and flown again.

Colonel Sanders once related a story of a Piper Commanche where the pilot was rendered unconscious by a CO leak. The plane continued on autopilot until it ran out of fuel, the autopilot commanded maximum nose up but with the elevator trim was unable to maintain altitude or produce a stall, and the plane mushed down into a corn field where the pilot--now breathing oxygen for a while--woke up without a scratch!!
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by SeptRepair »

Expat wrote:Calling people intellectually inferior is a bit strong... :roll:
So how would you rate a countries intellect that resorts to stealing technology rather then invent it?
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Snagmaster E »

Yeah Iran has this tendency to ..... well lie on occasion. Funny how we can't see the gear underneath. It's not like they haven't made grand claims before...


http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/ira ... ice-02596/



"Back in September 2006, there was a bit of a kerfuffle in some quarters over an Iranian news agency (IRNA) announcement that quoted the commander of the Iranian army General Attollah Salehi as saying their new indigeous Saegheh/ Saeqeh [DID: “thunder” or “lightning”, reports vary] aircraft is “similar to the F-18 fighter jet, but it is more capable and has been manufactured domestically… designed, remodeled, optimized and made more capable by our engineers… no country has aided us in its production.” Reports are also repeating Iran’s claim that it is developing a 5th generation “Shafagh” stealth fighter, without appropriate laughter or ridicule.

Readers may recall past Iranian claims re: “stealth” flying boats that obviously used stealth-killing propellers, and other such nonsense. At the time, DID offered a more sober and reasoned light on this new development. Now that IRNA news reports are resurfacing, including pictures, the issues seem worth revisiting.

More Heat Than Light? (Sept 2006)

The official FARS news agency article that touted the new aircraft as “more difficult to pick up on the radar systems compared with the normal version due to its higher maneuverability” was especially funny. The Saegeheh must be something special to be able to out-maneuver radar beams traveling near the speed of light....


...Instead, the general consensus among more informed observers is that Iran’s new fighter is a modified F-5E Tiger II fighter. the F-5E was an early 1970s era low-cost export fighter update of the 1960s-era F-5A fighter/ T-38 supersonic trainer, and it proved very popular with US allies. While Northrop Grumman’s F-5 page doesn’t mention Iran as an F-5 customer, the Shah’s air force most certainly was.

Twin tails, wings mounted above the intakes with the addition of leading edge strakes, and new avionics would appear to be the major modifications. The reports were careful not to tout new engines or the ability to fire medium-range missiles, for instance, and barring Russian assistance a radar that would be on par with even the AN/APG-65 of the 1980s vintage F/A-18As is highly unlikely....

...The real result for the Saegheh would appear to be an F-5E fighter with slightly improved avionics and improved “low and slow” flight characteristics, but not much more. Iran’s ability to modify and/or replace their F-5 E/F fighters and F-5B trainers is not entirely useless, as it will help them bolster their sagging force structure. Nevertheless, comparing the resulting aircraft to even an F/A-18A Hornet would appear to be just more of the usual bluster and overstretch as the clock ticks down on Iran’s nuclear program and its leadership’s subsequent plans."

~~~OR~~~

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/28/ir ... ing-boats/

"Iran unveils squadrons of flying boats
September 28th, 2010

Iran's Defense Ministry released photos of what it says are its new radar-evading flying boats, the Bavar 2.

Iran unveiled three squadrons of new flying boats on Tuesday, Iranian news agencies reported.

The craft, dubbed the Bavar 2, is armed with a machine gun and carries surveillance cameras, according to a report from the Iranian Student News Agency.

"Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the few countries which managed to design, build and use flying boats in a short time," said Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, who oversaw the delivering of the aircraft at the Bandar Abbas naval facility on the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz.

The delivery comes as Iran celebrates its Week of Sacred Defense, which commemorates its eight-year-long resistance to the 1980 Iraqi invasion, according to the Fars News Agency.

The flying boats look like one Iran used during Persian Gulf war games in April 2006. Media reports from the time include a video of a flying boat taking off.

After those 2006 reports, bloggers poked fun at Iran’s so-called stealth technology, saying the flying boat looked like something anyone could buy in kit form from mechanical magazine ads"
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Snagmaster E »

kevinsky18 wrote:http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/08/world/meast/iran-drone/
...The US has confirmed they lost it. They also confirm they “lost contact with it.” In other words they didn’t land it. Further if they felt their most top secret weapon was about to fall into the hands of an enemy they certainly would have hit a self destruct....
I think that the Iranians just took advantage of this situation and created a mock-up.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by WileyCoyote »

I'm pretty sure every country has stolen intellectual property at one point or another. Operation Paperclip anyone?
What concerns me is who else do they feel the need to spy on?
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by FlyGy »

SeptRepair wrote:
Expat wrote:Calling people intellectually inferior is a bit strong... :roll:
So how would you rate a countries intellect that resorts to stealing technology rather then invent it?
You mean a Country's intellect like the United States which acquired its nuclear weapons program, jet technology, and rocket systems from Germans and Chinese?

Name me a country that hasn't obtained any technology from another country and I'll call you a liar.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by robertsailor1 »

Canada?
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by FlyGy »

robertsailor1 wrote:Canada?
lol, can you say CF-18?
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Mig29 »

It's not like it is the first time USA has lost it's "high-tech/stealth" equipment...Anyone remember year 199 and the (in)famous F117 bomber downed over Yugoslavia??
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Expat »

I must be older, because I remember when they lost A bombs in the Med, in the sixties.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by DanWEC »

The then top-secret Aim 9 Sidewinder was very quickly compromised and subsequently copied by the Chinese and Russians when an undetonated Aim-9 got lodged in the tail of a Chinese Mig 19 in 1958. It was reverse engineered and produced very quickly after as the Russian AA-2 Atoll and the technological advantage was completely lost.
These things happen, but the drone is a mystery.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Dash-Ate »

US bases are marked on map - Iran will be taken over, another soverign country gone.


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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by justwork »

Or maybe this is all part of the plan. Who knows if that drone is actually as sophisticated as the media is leading on. Stealth coating or a rattle can job with some rustoleum from Home depot? All the data, maybe it's all planted to lead the enemy into thinking they've pulled the wool over the american's eyes.

I can't see america just sitting on their hands while their technology is dissected and secrets reveled.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Wilbur »

One thing you can be sure of, nothing either side is saying to the media is the truth; To do so would be complete idiocy from a security/intel perspective. Hell, maybe the thing was deliberatley allowed to be intercepted and captured after being laced with some bio agent that will disease and kill the engineers and officials who have contact with it. In the spy game, anything is within the realm of the possible.
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Re: Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

Post by Snagmaster E »

Wilbur wrote:One thing you can be sure of, nothing either side is saying to the media is the truth; To do so would be complete idiocy from a security/intel perspective. Hell, maybe the thing was deliberatley allowed to be intercepted and captured after being laced with some bio agent that will disease and kill the engineers and officials who have contact with it. In the spy game, anything is within the realm of the possible.

You're all still assuming that it's real.
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