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Iran's Military Claims To Have Downed US Surveillance Drone
mrquagmire submits a link to the Jerusalem Post's report that an American reconnaissance UAV has been captured by the Iranian military. "'Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran,' Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying. 'The spy drone, which has been downed with little damage, was seized by the Iranian armed forces.' ... 'The Iranian military's response to the American spy drone's violation of our airspace will not be limited to Iran's borders any more,' Iran's Arabic language Al Alam television quoted the military source as saying, without giving details."
Why is it that USA thinks it can push other countrys around so much? They are in everybodys face, from Europe on copyrights to violating the sovereign territory of many countries with airstrikes that kill innocents to drones.
Iran will sell this drone to China, I'm sure. The world needs China as a counterbalance to the aggression of the USA. It's better to have 2 superpowers than just one which can do whatever it pleases. If China is there to push back against usa, usa won't be able to cause so many probs anymore.
I mean I thought the whole idea is you send in unmanned drones to do a dangerous mission because losing a drone is preferable to losing a pilot.(Then again you'd hope the technology on the drone wouldn't be too advanced so the enemy doesn't get much out of shooting one down.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
It was US that violated Iran's airspace. They have every right to shoot it down. It happens frequently with my country too and they never do anything about it - they just go "yes, we will demand answers from the this time, honestly we promise!". Kudos to Iran for taking a stance.
Maybe Iran is getting ready to provoke a war, and knowing this, they are claiming a 3rd drone, even though they have not shown proof of any of them, so that after they provoke a conflict, and drones are used during said conflict, they can pick one up later as proof of the 3 as-of-yet unsubstantiated claims they have already made.
Not really. The US has been flying manned combat aircraft into Iran for several years probing air defences. My Persian cooworkers have a social app that tracks when people on the ground see the planes, I don't speak farsi (or understand the language) so I can't point you at it unfortunately. Searches for USAF probing iranian air defences gives some results along these lines.
The US is trying to fly as deep into Iran as they can before all the air defence sites 'light up', they're trying to locate all the air defence radars etc. It's illegal, but it's been going on for years, and everyone knows the game, the americans pretend 'this time is the time' they're going to attack natanz etc. and the Iranians call their bluff. Presumably one of these days the Israeli's or someone else will take this data and go after air defence sites along with the nuclear facilities but who knows.
Not saying this is what's happening, but there's a tactic of probing an enemy's air defenses to get them to switch on the radars they've been keeping hidden so you won't know to bomb them when the war starts.
It seems like there has been some effort from the US to further increase tensions with Iran - including a string of three catastrophic, improbable but still officially accidental explosions at various Iranian industrial facilities. Add that to Stuxnet and targeted assassinations of Iran's brightest nerds, and it paints a pretty clear picture that we the West are trying to ratchet up tensions. On the other side, there are probably hardliners who are happy to play along. I don't like any of this escalation.
Someone just blew up (at least) one of their missile bases. There are reports of more attacks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/image-shows-than-an-iranian-missile-site-was-destroyed/2011/11/28/gIQA7KZW5N_blog.html
Iran claimed it was an accident...
Course then the UK embassy then gets invaded and a drone is shot down. Or claimed. All a coincidence of course.
Deleted
Probably it has a full bag of USB sticks loaded with the latest SCADA worms lol
Now this is an interesting Trojan strategy - fly RC Planes, er, drones, around annoying foreign country. Have specialized Stuxnet-type software embedded in the plane. Have annoying foreign country shoot down RC plane and try to disassemble it to gain secrets.
ZAP! You've been pawned.
Wouldn't be all that hard. If this actually happened there are going to be dozens of people just aching to open the thing up. First one to find the JTAG connector wins a prize!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Whoever modded this insightful, hit yourself, and excuse yourself from any military-related discussion. You are either utterly stupid, or utterly ignorant, and in both cases, you have no place in a discussion like this beyond asking "how does this work?".
Aerial surveillance, especially low altitude aerial surveillance is of CRUCIAL importance. You cannot see things like tunnel network entrances, weapon caches, small defence emplacements and so on with high altitude surveillance from U2 and satellites when they are properly concealed against it. And with that surveillance being in existence for decades, countries like Iran have long perfected such camouflaging. What looks like a natural hill to a satellite becomes a hidden pillbox full of anti-armor weaponry when photographed from an angle. What looks like a bunch of civilian trucks becomes a mobile radar site. What looks like a mobile radar site becomes a fake transmitters designed to attract HARMs. Etc. Fake "weapon systems" designed specifically to fool satellite surveillance are something of a Russian speciality.
If you don't believe it, look at end of cold war. USSR army size has been throught to be about 40% greater then it really was, because Red Army perfected techniques for faking weapon systems specifically for satellite and U2 surveillance. If there was a war, most of the first strike would end up hitting wooden models and balloons that look like weapons while real weapons would be hidden in bunkers and emplacements that look like natural hills to a satellite. That is what drones are for - exact mapping rather then general one you do with a satellite/U2 sweep.
why Iran has been taking the ones destroyed over iraq and afghanistan apart for years.
Indeed most of the technical hacks(like the discovery of taliban troops with tv's capable of receiving drone transmissions are done by iranians.
However Iran has several times in the past claimed to have shot down a drone in their airspace, and not once have they actually shown the crash site. just parts. Parts from drones shot down over other countries.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Maybe someone can explain the whole U2 thing to me, because i just don't get it. I mean here is a tech invented in...what? 1958? Why hasn't anyone figured out how to swat those thing down like gnats already? i mean i could at least understand the SR71 blackbird as literally by the time you knew the thing was headed your way it was already gone. But the U2 ain't that fast and if the Ruskies were able to shoot down Powers why hasn't everyone else been knocking those things down?
As for TFA I'm sure i'll get labeled a racist for not kissing the booty but i have a feeling this is the USA wasting yet more money to dance to Israel's tune. they same jump and we just hop like good little frogs. The sad part is living next to a wealthy conservative college I've actually got to talk to a few of the guys that actually roam the corridors of power and make policies and scarily enough our entire ME policy pretty much boils down to "Jesus won't come back! Come back Jesus come back!"
Sometimes i don't know which is scarier, the whole backward assed ME Sharia countries or that a supposedly highly advanced western nation WITH multiple nuclear weapons is basing its policy for a major part of the planet, which has so far cost an incredible number of lives, on an 1800 year old sheep's ass parchment that says a 2000 year dead guy has to have a certain race in a certain spot or he won't have a place to park his fluffy white cloud.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I guess it all depends. How "aerial reconnaissance", being a violation of a country's air space is not considered an attack, it probably depends on the attacked one.
If someone gets inside your house with a camera, without your permission checking your private stuff, perhaps you don't consider it an attack... I mean, at least if you never knew that it happened you don't consider harm was done.
Now ask that same thing to someone holding trade secrets if this is or not an attack, why is it different if it's a country?. Although, I agree that it would piss me off quite a lot.
ya know what else is dumb? Believing what some wanker posts on slashdot.
So the CIA is not assassinating the religious fanatics who are making Iran shitty in the first place, but assassinating Iran's rational, secular thinkers?
RATIONAL secular thinkers would not be arming religious fanatics with nuclear weapons.
Scientists (engaged in nuclear research) are hard to grow.
Radical religious fanatics require no education, and can be recreated virtually overnight.
One would have thought that religious fanatics willing to blow them selves up would be just about exhausted and cleaned from the gene pool by now even in a depressing society with a horrible economy. Yet such is not the case. There is no point in taking out fanatics. You can't win that way. You need to turn them against each other, and remove any means of acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims, and attacking a Mosque was unthinkable. Now they are at each others throats and bombing each other's Mosques. ”Such subtlety . . . ” said Slartibartfast, ”one has to admire it.”.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm not sure you understand what "sovereignty" means.
It means if you have your own country, it's your garage, not anyone elses.
Nobody lives in this world alone, we all have neighbors. Iran's neighbors include the rest of the world.
There are limits as to what you can do in *your* "garage", and those limits are what ever the majority of your neighbors say you can do. Your neighbors have banded together and decided that you can not build and operate a meth lab in your garage. Beyond the public policy about drugs, operating a meth lab is dangerous not just to the operators but also the neighbors. There are laws, and you can't do it.
Iran's neighbors - the rest of the world - have decided that certain activities related to building nuclear bombs is not allowable. No amount of "sovereignty" changes this. No amount of blather from Libertarian Tea Baggers changes this.
Nuclear bomb building is not allowed.
Eliminating Iran's ability to build nukes will make the world a safer place. Sooner or later, things *will* come to a head, and Iran will have to be dealt with, and it's likely to involve military action.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's also as though someone wants to prevent a full-out shooting or nuclear war. Israel is taking a more and more hostile stance towards Iran. There are stories leaking about how the Israelis are going to attack Iran without US permission. If you were the US, you have to talk the Israelis off the ledge. So what do you do? You have to do what you did in the First Gulf War to stop the Israelis from coming into the war: hunt Scuds and do other shit to show them that you're providing an alternative. Israeli isn't going to let Iran get nukes. They will do anything to stop that, including a shooting war. Crippling Iran's nuclear capabilities in a backdoor way (I mean, Stuxnet was awesome, right?!) delays that war.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/