Did Iran literally hijack a US stealth drone?

[Expat]

Well, it's on Iran TV every day...

[mgeni]

that would be news!

[azimuthaviation]

Well, it's on Iran TV every day...

They sure dont keep much to themselves, for a nation of chess players they sure dont seem to be playing with much strategy.

[Expat]

Well, it's on Iran TV every day...

They sure dont keep much to themselves, for a nation of chess players they sure dont seem to be playing with much strategy.

And may be here, it is strategy.

[azimuthaviation]

Well, it's on Iran TV every day...

They sure dont keep much to themselves, for a nation of chess players they sure dont seem to be playing with much strategy.

And may be here, it is strategy.

Like as a deterrent? psychological warfare?

But if they are bragging that they have it, that they know how to bring it down, they are revealing their capabilities and that they know americas capabilities giving them an opportunity to change tactics and employ countermeasures. if it was brought down in a cyber attack and the technology inside analyzed and as far as the americans knew it crashed somewhere and was lost in the desert that would give iran a huge tactical advantage. In lebanon in 2006 Hezbollah had silkworm missiles and Israel didnt know and sucker punched them hitting one of their ships forcing it to retreat with dozens dead and wounded inside because it had its radars turned off thinking they were un needed and a hinderence to their other systems. If hezbollah said previously or even paraded like the iranians do the silkworm missiles as well as other technology in an attempt to scare the enemy they would not have had a succesful attack. Thats like having a perfectly set up ambush and saying "better not come any closer, were ready for you here"

[frosti]

Iran will be taken over, another soverign country gone.

What is the problem here?

[bombardierfixer]

Sorry, total BS. Its a mock up. Looks like they didn't have time to finish the gear.

[sky's the limit]

Looks like a mock up to me at first blush, but hard to tell.

That said, I'd say the Americans most definitely either lost the drone over Iran, or somehow had it shot down. Anything in the media is not going to be anywhere near the truth, that you can bet on. From either side.

Last year I got to operate one of the newer drones over Afghanistan, the technology is quite impressive, but even at the time I was wondering what would happen given a capable counter-electronic warfare structure on the other side. The link to the ground is the big thing with these units, and it must be remembered that the technology has progressed leaps and bounds since platforms like the infamous Predator which is basically a 'stupid drone' at this point compared to its peers. The one I got to play with had significantly increased capabilities over Predator (strictly from an airframe point of view, ISR packages change all the time). The protocols in place to bring it back under all kinds of circumstances are very impressive.

Regardless, you can be sure the Americans lost one, how is anyone's guess at this point, and you can be sure the Iranians are going to get as much milage out of it as possible. It has to be remembered that the war in Afghanistan is not the only thing happening in the region, and perhaps is not even the most significant thing anymore...

stl

[cncpc]

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.

Well, ah...

That`s a pretty unusual spin to put on this. No, I don`t get your drift, and I doubt too many others here will either. You like all things American, you don`t like the Chinese and Iranians. So you need to live in a world where when things go bad for the Americans, it demonstrates intellectual inferiority on the part of people who obviously had the intellectual ability to hack into the drone software and capture (sorry, steal) it.

If that works for you, fill your boots.

[cncpc]

Iran will be taken over, another soverign country gone.

What is the problem here?

The problem is that you have to ask what the problem is.

[laticsdave]

So the US have asked Iran for their misssing Airfix plane back. But the Secrety Of State (Hilary Clinton) doesn't expect Iran to return it.
I wonder how long it is before the US is looking to invade Iran on the pretext of looking for atomic powered pocket calculators, plutonium covered protractors and irradiated rulers (weapons of Math Deduction!).

[Hawkerflyer]

I must be older, because I remember when they lost A bombs in the Med, in the sixties.

A few more...

STRAY #1: Into the Pacific
February 13, 1950. An American B-36 bomber en route from Alaska to Texas during a training exercise lost power in three engines and began losing altitude. To lighten the aircraft the crew jettisoned its cargo, a 30-kiloton Mark 4 (Fat Man) nuclear bomb, into the Pacific Ocean. The conventional explosives detonated on impact, producing a flash and a shockwave. The bomb’s uranium components were lost and never recovered. According to the USAF, the plutonium core wasn’t present.

STRAY #2&3: Into Thin Air
March 10, 1956. A B-47 carrying two nuclear weapon cores from MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to an overseas airbase disappeared during a scheduled air-to-air refueling over the Mediterranean Sea. After becoming lost in a thick cloud bank at 14,500 feet, the plane was never heard from again and its wreckage, including the nuclear cores, was never found. Although the weapon type remains undisclosed, Mark 15 thermonuclear bombs (commonly carried by B-47s) would have had a combined yield of 3.4 megatons.

STRAYS #4&5: Somewhere in a North Carolina Swamp
January 24, 1961. A B-52 carrying two 24-megaton nuclear bombs crashed while taking off from an airbase in Goldsboro, North Carolina. One of the weapons sank in swampy farmland, and its uranium core was never found despite intensive search efforts to a depth of 50 feet. To ensure no one else could recover the weapon, the USAF bought a permanent easement requiring government permission to dig on the land.

STRAY #6: The Incident in Japan
December 5, 1965. An A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft carrying a 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb) rolled off the deck of the U.S.S. Ticonderoga and fell into the Pacific Ocean. The plane and weapon sank in 16,000 feet of water and were never found. 15 years later the U.S. Navy finally admitted that the accident had taken place, claiming it happened 500 miles from land the in relative safety of the high seas. This turned out to be not true; it actually happened about 80 miles off Japan’s Ryuku island chain, as the aircraft carrier was sailing to Yokosuka, Japan after a bombing mission over Vietnam.

These revelations caused a political uproar in Japan, which prohibits the United States from bringing nuclear weapons into its territory.
STRAYS #7&8: 250 kilotons of explosive power
Spring, 1968. While returning to home base in Norfolk, Virginia, the U.S.S. Scorpion, a nuclear attack submarine, mysteriously sank about 400 miles to the southwest of the Azores islands. In addition to the tragic loss of all 99 crewmembers, the Scorpion was carrying two unspecified nuclear weapons – either anti-submarine missiles or torpedoes that were tipped with nuclear warheads. These could yield up to 250 kilotons explosive power (depending which kind of weapon was used).

[Castorero]

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.

It wouldn't be the first time this strategy has been used successfully...Beware of Greeks bearing gifts?

Then there was the dead "British officer" strategically dumped off the coast of Spain prior to D-Day, with an attache case containing the plans for the Allied landings in Europe handcuffed to his wrist ? The Nazis swallowed that one whole.

Could this be a horse of a different color and composition?

Imagine what the Americans could have packed into the electronics, data bank and "newest" technology.

Brilliant, if you ask me.

By the time the Iranians/Chinese/Russians/etc, figure out that they have been had, the Israelis will have demolished all the "wrong" targets and there will be a number of not so great drones reverse engineered by whoever wants to.

I am so far out of the loop on this one... but, cant imagine the Americans sending those bird dogs out on missions without a variety of very sturdy leashes, in the event that something were to go wrong.

Maybe one of those leashes was long enough for the Iranians to grab, with a little help from above?

I am going with the Trojan Horse Gambit on this one...

On the other hand...being entirely possible that the drone did exactly was it was supposed to do in a fatal malfunction scenario and was totally destroyed, what better stick to poke the Americans with, than a hasty mock up of the real thing ?

I am sure that in this scenario, no one is fooling anyone who knows exactly what happened to the real drone, and perhaps this transparent preening of the Iranians may be designed for domestic or regional consumption. Who knows?!

The Americans have asked for the thing back... those guys have a sense of humour eh?

[Expat]

The problem as I see it here, is that way too many people back home think that our guys are always the best, the smartest, in everything they do. Of course, mainstream media carries that ideology, showing the side that must be showned. A lot of real information never makes it home.
But reality on the ground is quite different. Blunders happen daily here. Drones have hit more innocents than real ennemy targets. They have a very poor record. Air raids have also killed many friendly forces personnel.
A lot of foreign troops here messed badly, at times. Soldiers and officers have big egos, and quite a few of the high ranking officers have been sacked. Others have muddied the waters to cover their blunders. Many have been caught in corruption scandals, but many more have not been exposed.
The reconnaisance drones are mainly operated by the CIA, who acknoledged a while ago, to be present in Iran, trying to stir the pot there. No big surprise that they lost one. There is no conspiracy theories to be debated here. Someone screwed up, and is probably paying for it now.
Cheers,

[Brewguy]

If there is an afterlife ..... I'd bet Gary Powers is sitting up there somewhere, beer in hand, laughing his ass off over this.

Either this is some sort of a trojan horse type of thing - a concocted incident in which Iran has been allowed to think they've won a valued prize; Or, the US are a bunch of over-confident dumb asses.

If you're going to send spy craft to overfly hostile enemy territory, you'd better damn well make sure there is a fail-safe to keep sensitive technology out of enemy hands.

Only time will tell which it is.

[Spokes]

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.

Friendly? Is that why they keep flinging rockets at me? I'd hate to see things if they were not friendly.

[vcollazo]

I think you misunderstood his meaning. Friendly was not the proper term to use. He obviously meant an environment without a real antiaircraft threat above about 5000 feet AGL.

[Castorero]

If there is an afterlife ..... I'd bet Gary Powers is sitting up there somewhere, beer in hand, laughing his ass off over this.

Either this is some sort of a trojan horse type of thing - a concocted incident in which Iran has been allowed to think they've won a valued prize; Or, the US are a bunch of over-confident dumb asses.

If you're going to send spy craft to overfly hostile enemy territory, you'd better damn well make sure there is a fail-safe to keep sensitive technology out of enemy hands.

Only time will tell which it is.

Exactly...The "enemy" has always been on the look out for any opportunity to acquire the "others" hardware.

I was at the Chinese Museum of War in Beijing last week where, while admiring the remarkable shape of a black DHC-2 that had apparently been flown out of Taiwan, defecting on the southern shore of mainland China, I spied a strange but beautiful, long, sleek shape of an airframe at the back of the exhibit hall... What was it ?

The placard said that it was the remnants of an American U-2, and it certainly looked like it.

The thing is that this hulk appeared to have been assembled piece by piece, and quite a few small pieces seemed to be missing, much like
a post crash assemblage, and thought no more of it.

Any of you older chaps remember a U-2 being lost over or near China sometime in the last century?

But come to think of it I thought at the time that the whole thing looked a bit off, like maybe I could be looking at a clever sheet metal job mock-up.

As far as the DHC-2, they seemed a bit put off when I asked if they wanted to be rid of this old piece of 'Canadian junk'

[Expat]

Spy planes stories can sometimes be very hard to figure out. As always, governments avoid embarassment bu forging stories.
The U2 plane incident over the USSR is quite exemplary of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident

[RenegadeAV8R]

I was at the Chinese Museum of War in Beijing last week where, while admiring the remarkable shape of a black DHC-2 that had apparently been flown out of Taiwan, defecting on the southern shore of mainland China, I spied a strange but beautiful, long, sleek shape of an airframe at the back of the exhibit hall... What was it ?

According to Wikipedia; Taiwan (Republic Of China) lost five U-2 over China.

At the end of ROC's U-2 operations, out of a total of 19 U-2C/F/G/R aircraft operated by the 35th Squadron from 1959 to 1974, 11 were lost. The squadron flew a total of about 220 missions, with about half over mainland China, resulting in five aircraft shot down...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

[Expat]

And not only U2s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident

[niss]

Iran official: We tricked the U.S. surveillance drone to land intact
Speaking with the Christian Science Monitor, Iranian electronic warfare specialist says Iranian forces tampered with the RQ-170's GPS to make it think it was landing in its Afghanistan base.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east ... t-1.401641

[azimuthaviation]

Iran official: We tricked the U.S. surveillance drone to land intact
Speaking with the Christian Science Monitor, Iranian electronic warfare specialist says Iranian forces tampered with the RQ-170's GPS to make it think it was landing in its Afghanistan base.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east ... t-1.401641

I would love to be proved wrong but unless they can do it again, I dont believe it

[kevinsky18]

Iran official: We tricked the U.S. surveillance drone to land intact
Speaking with the Christian Science Monitor, Iranian electronic warfare specialist says Iranian forces tampered with the RQ-170's GPS to make it think it was landing in its Afghanistan base.

Actually based on this statement yes I can see exactly how they did it and it's totally plausible.

I would assume that this drone had something similar to WAAS so that it can self land. WAAS is a ground based GPS correction system.

Anyone see where this is going?? Take a ground based WAAS transmitter and flood the air not with a precise correction but instead a precise deviation making the drones WAAS system think it’s now over Afghanistan instead of Iran.

Then introduce a standard jamming system to jam manual control of the plane and what happens? The drone loses contact with home and automatically self flies back to base. Only the fake WAAS signal is telling it that the coordinates for home base is actually the coordinates for an Iran base.

Standard off the shelf technology available to any country.

[azimuthaviation]

WAAS is a civilian GPS and doesnt extend over afghanistan. GPS signals are too complicated to even block let alone mimic