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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."

12 of 522 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't that kind of the point? by NotSoHeavyD3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.)

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    1. Re:Isn't that kind of the point? by Frequency+Domain · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem with this is that those drones have encrypted radios and if they didn't get wiped in time closely guarded encryption keys.

      Say what? Not changing crypto keys for every mission implies a level of incompetence I find hard to believe. Having hardwired crypto keys even more so.

  2. Re:First strike? by InsightIn140Bytes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:First strike? by Sir_Sri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ? by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. Why are we provoking Iran? by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. No reason not to believe them by Colin+Smith · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
     

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  7. Re:USB sticks by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

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    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  8. Re:sold to china by koan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is there to "win" in Afghanistan? We had an opportunity to be their friends/ally after the Russians left but we didn't.

    No one wins in Afghanistan, no one.

    America has not won a single war since WW2.

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    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  9. Re:First strike? by peragrin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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  10. Re:First strike? by icebike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.”.

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  11. Re:First strike? by darkmeridian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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