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."

Comments

First strike?

[srussia]

Here we go.

Re:First strike?

[InsightIn140Bytes]

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.

Re:First strike?

[Sir_Sri]

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.

Re:First strike?

[Martin Blank]

This also isn't the first time that they've shot down a drone. I imagine that they make a big deal about this in part because they can't do much about U-2 overflights, and in part because it validates the government's rhetoric about how the whole world (except maybe Syria) is out to get Iran. Shooting down a drone is not terribly difficult.

Re:First strike?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the regime-backed riot that occurred at the British embassy in Tehran following British economic sanctions against Iran.

Re:First strike?

[caladine]

Allegedly. Given the amount of evidence and the history of the regime (last time they made this claim they backed off it) I'm skeptical. It wouldn't really surprise me either way. Iran was putting their equivalent of a drone into Iraq while US forces were there. Maybe they're just returning the favor.

Re:First strike?

[fsckmnky]

The US is trying to fly as deep into Iran as they can before all the air defense sites 'light up', they're trying to locate all the air defence radars etc.

There is 0 incentive to fly into a territory to find radar sites *before* a conflict has started. Anti-radar munitions have been around since at least the 70's. If a conflict were to break out, the US could then send in aircraft / drones with ARMs and take out any sites that light up.

This is at least the 3rd time Iran has claimed to have downed a US drone. They have provided no proof for any of the claims.

Re:First strike?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Additionally, the technical specs of the radar systems are already known, because Russia probably makes the systems and American intelligence has the instruction manual.

Knowing the frequencies and techniques of the enemy radar is enough to build an operational flight program for our countermeasures to jam it. I'm pretty sure that it's in our best interests to jam and/or deceive the radars rather than deliberately "light them up" before we strike. I know because I was an avionics troop in the USAF, specializing in electronic warfare (TISS).

Lastly, though, I want to say that all this rhetoric in favor of war with Iran being shoved up our asses is disgusting. With public approval of government at an all-time low and protests in every major city, it is clear that the government have completely lost touch with reality. We are not buying this bullshit again, from the bullshit "WMD" excuse used to go to war with Iraq to the conspicuously missing pictures of Bin Laden ( the U.S. had no problem with proudly displaying Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay as if they were a science fair exhibit! ).

This is fucking bullshit. This shit-talking has to stop.

Re:First strike?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your friend has been telling you jokes. US has never flied manned aircraft into Iran let alone for several years. If that had happened everyone would know. There is not even a single news or even rumor on that except the one you just delivered. And I tell you that because I follow Iranian defense news everyday for the last few years.

Re:First strike?

[goarilla]

We're not out to get Iran, we're out to get your water with our rainmachines. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8527455/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-says-Europe-stealing-Irans-rain.html

Re:First strike?

[meerling]

A aerial reconnaissance is not an attack, much less a first strike by any definition.
Sure it's pisses off the target, and is subject to being shot down, but nobody considers it an act of war, that takes killing somebody or capturing/taking something/somewhere.
For that matter, until either the other side admits to losing the drone, or Iran coughs it up to a recognized 3rd party, like the UN for example, it's just propaganda on Irans part. I've seen the B.S. propaganda countries will say in an attempt to gain leverage. Remember the whole USA bombing Libya back in the 80s? I remember them showing an "unexploded bomb" that was actually only part of a high drag fin that wasn't even used in that operation. They also claimed bombing of civilian neighborhoods and showed photos of an area covered with potholes, but the bombs the USA used were larger than most of the potholes themselves and would have leveled the area instead of making potholes. Those holes, if they were caused during that incident, would have been from their own SAM falling down on the city due to stupidity in both the shooters (don't shoot into your own city), and the missile designers (on a miss, it should have self destructed).

I don't care what side you want to take (or not), but when it comes to countries and their propensity for propaganda, don't believe word of mouth, demand proof.
(Something which the article doesn't provide any of.)

Re:First strike?

[tunapez]

There is 0 incentive to fly into a territory to find radar sites *before* a conflict has started.

Au contraire, mon frer. Only gamblers, gluttons and losers go into a fight without assessing their opponent's strengths and weaknesses first. There is a tangible variance between capability and practice; Mismanagement, ignorance, misinformation, unknowns...

Re:First strike?

[hedwards]

Iran has a history of expandable borders when they want something that's just slightly over the border. Very much like North Korea in that respect. It's definitely possible that the drone was in their airspace, but it's also possible that there was no drone or that it wasn't in their airspace. Given the credibility that Iran has, I wouldn't necessarily assume that they're being above the board without more information.

Re:First strike?

[fsckmnky]

The "Mismanagement, ignorance, misinformation, unknowns" in this case, being, the belief that one must violate airspace in order to assess defenses.

Re:First strike?

[chill]

Really? Because we did this ALL THE TIME with the U.S.S.R. up until at least the mid-1980s. Maybe someone didn't get your memo.

Re:First strike?

[fsckmnky]

And technology has stood completely still since the 1980s, therefore, this tactic is still the primary means with which to assess radar locations ?

Re:First strike?

[TheLink]

Iran coughs it up to a recognized 3rd party, like the UN for example

If I were them I'd sell it to China.

Re:First strike?

[Baloroth]

The problem with ARMs is they only work if the radar stations are actually turned on. Common military doctrines states you only turn on a handful at a time, to prevent ARMs from targeting them. Really, you only need a couple of stations on at a time, and if they have, say, 30, they could keep radar coverage active for days by cycling them.

Note that modern ARMs will still work if the radar is switched off mid-flight, so you will still (usually) destroy the site, you just can't eliminate them all that way right away, which is extremely desirable. Even one functional station could completely fuck up an attack, so you find all of them beforehand so you know what to hit.

Re:First strike?

[Luckyo]

No, that is an opinion of an opinionated, and fully fed civilian. Fed with bullshit that is.

Reality is, essentially every country that has been under any international pressure has long perfected techniques of hiding important weapon caches, tunnel entrances and other important assets from high altitude aerial surveillance. That is why when you are preparing for an attack, you need low altitude aerial surveillance to find as many of those as possible.

You can go in half-blind, sure, and you'll likely win anyway. But you'll take a whole lot more losses then you need because you'll keep running into those defences you never saw, as they bite you in the ass. Hard.

And unlike folks you like, US military command isn't dumb, ignorant, or too focused on its own propaganda. Lessons from Iraq have actually been learnt, as have been ones from Afghanistan.

Re:First strike?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was probably made in China.

Re:First strike?

[fsckmnky]

You can go in half-blind

Or one can not go in at all, and still f up the enemy badly. When and if this happens, there will be no ambiguity as to who did what. Until then, its all just propaganda from one side or the other.

Re:First strike?

[khallow]

There is 0 incentive to fly into a territory to find radar sites *before* a conflict has started.

So why would you not want to find the radar sites before a conflict started? I'd say there's incentive there.

Re:First strike?

[Luckyo]

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.

Re:First strike?

[Luckyo]

Want to bet? I bet that majority people in USA believe that war against Iran is justifiable.

People are gullible by their very nature, and in large empires like USA, they are raised and taught to be more gullible then they would otherwise be, because the "needs of the motherland" require it.

Re:First strike?

[the eric conspiracy]

I call bullshit on this. The US is a net FUEL i.e. refined oil product exporter, not net energy exporter.

The US imports FAR more energy than it exports and an increases in oil prices damage the economy.

Re:First strike?

[fsckmnky]

Perhaps my memory of the event is somewhat hazy, but if I recall correctly, when the second Iraq war started, the first strike was with cruise missiles from navy ships. Surely, cruise missiles would light up any radar defense stations, at which point, they would all be on the map. This is why I say it is not necessary to send in drones / piloted aircraft solely for information gathering purposes. Any radar site locations can be found during the cruise missile attack.

For arguments sake, lets say Iran knows this, and orders all radar stations to remain powered down during the cruise missile attack. They would be sealing their own fate with this action, and have no chance whatsoever of actually defending against the attack. This would call into question the logic of having a radar based defense system with an operational strategy of maintaining non-operational status. They might as well not exist at that point, and the cruise missiles will hit a different, more valuable, primary target.

Re:First strike?

[peragrin]

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.

Re:First strike?

[Luckyo]

What...the...fuck? Frankly, if US military hasn't been flying any reconnaissance flights into Iran, they'd be up for criminal negligence. It's their damn job to keep assessing the defences of the potential hostile target. Hell, they do it to NEUTRAL countries all the time.

Granted, in most of the cases with neutral countries, there is some sort of an agreement in place for mutual fly-overs and "test reaction speed" runs are rare event that happens about once a year or even less. But if you seriously believe that US hasn't been flying reconnaissance flights over Iran for decades, you're either ignorant or plain foolish.

Re:First strike?

[Richard_at_work]

Because it's not reliable information once the mission is over - radar sites can and do move, switch frequencies and even power levels.

Re:First strike?

[Runaway1956]

I'm not the majority, but I have read about Operation Ajax. Yeah, I'm American, and I sorta think that we are special, and I like making money, yada yada yada. But, I can't justify what happened with Ajax. We destroyed a legitimate democracy, for the sake of a few cents per barrel of oil.

If I were Iranian, or Persian, or even Arabic, I'd be pretty pissed at the US too.

Re:First strike?

[Luckyo]

Military plans for ALL scenarios, and executes one that it's given an order to execute. Therefore preparation for all scenarios must be conducted when possible.

Re:First strike?

[Runaway1956]

Yes, your memory has hazed over a little bit. It took weeks before all of Iraq's radar sites were eliminated. That, in spite of the fact that we had already painted them in the runup to the war. Month after month, we flew into Iraqi territory, recording everything we could, including the locations of radar installations. Still, when the war started, mobile radar units had been moved, and some of the stationary units hadn't ever been mapped.

Military intelligence changes daily, if not hourly. You've got to stay on top of things, or your intel is shit.

Re:First strike?

[JDeane]

At this point in time I would consider it very likely that we park a couple of satellites overhead and just watch all the radar stations then just triangulate the positions down to the foot or something.

Maybe some of these neat radar ground mapping satellites with the transmitter turned off and just the listening part turned on.

Re:First strike?

[fsckmnky]

Yes, your memory has hazed over a little bit. It took weeks before all of Iraq's radar sites were eliminated.

My comment above did not at all address the time to eliminate *all* radar locations. My comment was only concerned with the first strike, or initial action. The major question on this thread that seems to require being addressed is ... "Is it at all practical to risk the political implications of flying drones over a sovereign nations territory as a ramp up to war." My opinion, and it is indeed only my opinion, is no, it is not. At least not concerning Iran.

Iran and Iraq ( before they were invaded), although not exactly the same, are in fairly similar situations military. As a first action the US didn't fly a few drones or a few aircraft over Iraq in an overly cautious attempt to map its radar stations. Yes of course they are mobile. Yes of course planes flew *at some point* in the war. But it was cruise missiles that began the first strike. Those cruise missiles given the current state of technology and communications are certainly capable of targeting and/or reporting the locations of any active radar stations that light up. Those get added to the map, more missiles are flown, and this process repeats until such time as planes and drones can be flown with a low probability of loss.

It's all just my 2 cents. Why fly a handful of drones, with no immediate intention to take action, risk having them shot down and used as a propaganda tool that would consolidate political opinions against you ? Makes no sense when you have the capability to consolidate backing for the action first, then hit a home run.

For the last decade or more, the talk has been all about drones. They are everywhere. Here, there, flying over the neighbors house. Its drone fever.

If the Iranian authorities show the world some parts ... I'll recant the basis for my speculation. Until they have parts, I'm going with the most probable scenario that this is just another one of their fish stories. They are good at producing fish stories.

Re:First strike?

[hairyfeet]

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.

Re:First strike?

[PopeRatzo]

I call bullshit on this. The US is a net FUEL i.e. refined oil product exporter, not net energy exporter.

You're right about that. I stand corrected. The US is a net exporter of petroleum. I can't find any statistics on total energy, so I can't say one way or the other whether they're a total exporter of energy.

But if we're a net exporter of petroleum products, and coal, then what energy sources are we importing so much of that it changes the balance to make us into a net importer of energy overall?

Interestingly, it seems that the US is exporting more solar gear to China than the other way around. I understand that exporting solar equipment is not the same as exporting the energy, but I was still surprised to see it.

Re:First strike?

[Sloppy]

How would the US react if Iran sent a drone?

The US would do the same thing the USSR did 50 years ago to a U2: shoot it down and complain.

Re:First strike?

[chill]

Primary? Probably not. A useful method of confirmation, quite possibly.

Re:First strike?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

According to some, the covert war has already started:

* $400 million funding for CIA Iran covert ops program

* Assassinations of Iranian scientists (the ones we know about: Majid Shahriari, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani (survived), Darioush Rezaeinejad)

* Cyber attacks (Stuxnet etc.)

* Sabotage of military/industrial sites (bombing of Isfahan uranium plant)

* Assassinations of military personnel (the head of the Revolutionary Guards missile program)

* And now: 12 CIA operatives arrested in Iran

It's almost as if someone is trying to provoke a full on war...

Re:First strike?

[zippthorne]

It was invented to go up against USSR, who eventually were able to down one. Against superpower military spending, the U2 is vulnerable. But it flys really high, so it takes some serious engineering skill just to design a weapon that can even reach it's height, let alone accurately kill one.

Those resources are not available to lesser militaries, at least not yet, and there will always be nations for whom high altitude overflight is still safe. Loiter time and distance (high altitude is still way, way, way closer than satellite) mean that the U2 is still an extremely cost effective surveillance platoform and is likely to remain so for some time against many targets. Further, unlike satellites, the U2 can be flown at arbitrary times, rather than on a regular and predictable schedule.

Re:First strike?

[edman007]

It's mostly a cost thing, the U2 flew very very high, the wiki puts it at 70,000 feet, very few planes can even fly that high, so planes can't really do an intercept, also it's altitude is above the design range of most radars. Radar searching for planes puts most of it's power in areas where they will find planes, so they are pointed to not look too much into the 70k ft flight area, they could probably pick it up, but it probably wouldn't track it through the whole coarse over the coverage area. The same radar could just be pointed up and it would do a much better job at tracking it, but that would significantly reduce the range of the radar. The only real option to take it out is then a SAM that can hit things at 70k ft, when the U2 came out, things just didn't fly that high, SAMs simply couldn't fly that high either, now with modern planes many will hit it, but ultimatly it is a cost tradeoff, like a space ship adding a little bit of range means more fuel, and you need more fuel to carry that extra fuel, it all adds up, twice the distance on the missile means much more than twice the size (and cost) without increasing any speed/damage/maneuverability specs. Once the missiles came out that could hit those altitudes they came out with an SR-71, basically even if you did see it, your missile would need a range of something like 100 miles at mach 5 to get an intercept coarse, that in a huge amount of fuel when you consider even today, things like a sidewinder only goes 22mi at mach 2.5.

Re:First strike?

[ericloewe]

Why bother with cruise missiles? You can probably send at least 20 drones for half the price of a single cruise missile, with the advantage of being able to reuse at least some of them.

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

Yes, fortunately for us on our moral high-ground, Iran and North Korea are the only nations that have a history of territorial ambitions. The United States would never do something like that. Neither would Britain.

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

Yes, because the best time to discover a radar site is when you are flying over it... seriously, you don't think there might be some advantage in knowing the location of a radar site *before* it turns on and lights up your aircraft? And, you know, possibly taking it out with cruise missile instead of risking planes and pilots?

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

Allegedly. Given the amount of evidence and the history of the regime (last time they made this claim they backed off it) I'm skeptical. It wouldn't really surprise me either way. Iran was putting their equivalent of a drone into Iraq while US forces were there. Maybe they're just returning the favor.

Given this is a mid-altitude drone (50K feet) which has significant lack of stealth technology, about which Wikipedia says:

Aviation Week postulates that these design elements suggest the designers have avoided 'highly sensitive technologies' due to the near certainty of eventual operational loss inherent with a single engine design and a desire to avoid the risk of compromising leading edge technology

the shoot down is entirely plausible, and could easily be accomplished with what ever operational missiles or even manned fighter aircraft the Iranian's have in operation. An unmasked exhaust makes this drone vulnerable to heat seeker missiles.

At 6 million per copy, they are relatively cheap, and containing nothing particularly secret, it may even have been used as cover decoy for a much more expensive and more capable vehicle on a concurrent mission.

Re:First strike?

[blind monkey 3]

Citation? Iraq tried expanding their border by taking Iranian territory, I don't know any instance where Iran tried to expand their border, I also do not know of any case where Iran has claimed their border extended further than it does (this includes the British naval incident and the hikers - I do not believe they were spies but they were in Iranian territory and Iran got some propaganda for home consumption).

Nato has released a statement informing us that they "lost control" of a drone over the weekend. I agree, without evidence, take it with a grain of salt - I would not trust Iran or "our side" to be honest with us.

Re:First strike?

[wagnerrp]

Which is why you keep having to send subsequent missions in and re-map them. There is such a thing as an ideal site for radar, and you can't just pack these things up and go at a moment's notice. You have to shut down, pack up, move, unpack, realign their systems, perform a baseline scan of the environment to compare with, and link back into the rest of the network. They do this in staggered pattern over several weeks, so as to not leave any gaps in the coverage. If you have everyone move the moment the drone leaves, they could send in a strike and you would be completely undefended.

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

How would the US react if Iran sent a drone?

The US would do the same thing the USSR did 50 years ago to a U2: shoot it down and complain.

Are you so sure?

Russian aircraft use to routinely overfly Alaska and penetrate as far as 100 miles from Fairbanks and the US did nothing. In recent times they F15s at Galena Forward Operations base, but even those are gone these days.

There is very little to be gleaned in drone surveillance over the US because we know better than to leave anything out side in view of satellites, and the society is so open there are easier ways.

Re:First strike?

[guspasho]

No, they don't. Iran hasn't invaded anybody in like 2500 years.

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

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.”.

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

There is 0 incentive to fly into a territory to find radar sites *before* a conflict has started.

Ah, no. False. 100% False.

Mapping radar ahead of time is very cost effective. There is no point is shooting a HARM at a remote radar towed behind a truck to some god forsaken mountain side with no coms to any air defense sites, and then losing aircraft approaching their targets to Radars that were there all along but turned on at the last possible instant. You want to know ahead of time which radars you need to kill and which are decoys.

What ever fools marked the parent as insightful, Thank You: for staying in your Mom's basement and not joining the Military.

Re:First strike?

[chispito]

Yes, pulling up stuff from the 19th century is extremely relevant to this conversation about an unmanned aerial drone.

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

DOH, forgot the word "Stationed".

Re:First strike?

[tftp]

not once have they actually shown the crash site. just parts.

How much would it satisfy you to see a rocky terrain, a little pit in the ground, and a bunch of unrecognizable pieces of metal scattered around?

If you have parts you can fake the crash site. Because of that the value of showing a picture of a crash site is zero. It doesn't even matter if the picture is a small JPEG or a huge RAW file - the photos themselves can be real.

Parts themselves are harder to fake. What you have left then is sources of those parts (as you pointed out.)

Re:First strike?

[TapeCutter]

Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims, and attacking a Mosque was unthinkable.

Poppycock!

Re:First strike?

[crunchygranola]

But if we're a net exporter of petroleum products, and coal, then what energy sources are we importing so much of that it changes the balance to make us into a net importer of energy overall?

The U.S. is a net importer of petroleum. The U.S. is a net exporter of refined petroleum products. Why is that? We have a huge refining industry - thus we don't need anyone's refined petroleum, whereas we can import oil, refine it, and reexport the products at a profit. The U.S. import about 4.5 barrels of crude oil for each barrel of refined petroleum exported.

Re:First strike?

[SomeKDEUser]

Funny thing: the Russians never intended to down a U2. Much too risky, much too complicated diplomatically. So they did the obvious to the guy who launched the missiles: they gave him a medal, and made sure he would never, ever, get another shot at a plane.

It is very likely the blackbird _could_ have been downed. But this was never the game.

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but just in case it isn't... Iran-Iraq war, Invasion of Kuwait, Afghan civil war (plus pt2), ...

Re:First strike?

[reve_etrange]

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.

Muslims have always been the majority of casualties in terror attacks by Islamic fundamentalists.
Here is a state department report on the demographics of terror.

See also this, this and this.

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

Just reporting what the Muslim claims were prior to the Gulf wars.
Go read some history.

It was widely claimed by Muslims that they would never make war on each other and any attack by the US would build solidarity.
Instead the opposite happened. Sunni and Shiite were turned against each other (even though they had long history of conflict), and the entire region was manipulated into fighting each other.

The solidarity never appeared. Instead they started bombing each other's mosques.
   

Re:First strike?

[PopeRatzo]

The U.S. is a net importer of petroleum. The U.S. is a net exporter of refined petroleum products.

Thanks for the clarification.

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

I assumed the OP was alluding to the past, since he used that "history" word. But if you want to talk about now, please do so.... how exactly has Iran tried to "expand its borders" in the last couple of years? I really would like to know. As far as I can see (and contrary to the images portrayed by some Western media) the Iranian government hasn't invaded anyone, hasn't "settled" or captured any land, and has in fact been praised by the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq for being a good and helpful neighbor.

The government of Iran were also a major regional enemy of the Taliban - after declaring opium unlawful, the Iranian government eradicated the domestic trade in 18 months, and started fighting the Taliban smugglers who use Iran as a transit route to Europe. Three Iranian security agents are killed every day in this "war"; the total killed numbers in the thousands, and they almost went to war with the Taliban when they governed Afghanistan. This is something that our media forget to mention when they try to to convince us that Iran is the bad guy allied with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

I am no apologist for the Iranian government. From our liberal west point of view, we may not like the religious society that they want to create, but compared to ourselves their territorial ambitions seem to have been remarkably limited. Are they the ones that have invaded our neighbors? Are they the ones with soldiers deployed along our borders? Are they the ones constantly meddling in the politics of north America or Europe? Did they ever overthrow a western government and install a dictator? No. And yet, we have done all of these things to them. No wonder they dislike us.

Disagreeing with a government is not a reason to go to war:

"Old men declare war because they have failed to solve complex political and economic problems."

"War is the most striking instance of the failure of intelligence to master the problem of human relationships."

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

This also isn't the first time that they've shot down a drone. I imagine that they make a big deal about this in part because they can't do much about U-2 overflights

U2? Really?

I didn'e know it was still used in potential war zones.
Are they actually employed where they might be shot down?
The day when the U2 was safe from even surplus Russian missiles is LONG past. http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/21983.html

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/21983.html

The S-400 would have no problem taking out a U2.

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

Reading comprehension 101.

The post you are replying to said "Manned Aircraft".

Which is why this story is about a drone.

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

The U2 flies very high. Russia persevered and got a bit lucky; there were many fly overs where they tried to intercept the U2, but their planes couldn't fly high enough. Their SAMs couldn't fly high enough either. But they persevered, and eventually invented a SAM that could fly high enough. Powers wasn't meant to survive, he was supposed to swallow his suicide pill, or eject at an altitude that would kill him (supposedly, the U2 pilots were not told that ejection at the altitude they were flying at would kill them). Unfortunately for the CIA, Powers was smart and didn't want to die - he didn't take his pill, and he stayed in his wrecked plane in uncontrolled descent until he was at a safe altitude before ejecting.

But yeah, it is hard to shoot down something that is very high, and even if you could, there are spy satellites that are even higher. Best to just hide whatever it is you're doing underground.

Re:First strike?

[Kyusaku Natsume]

The current president of Mexico like the 5 assats before him puts American interests before the interests of the Mexican state. The bloodly Mexican drug war is fought on behalf of the American government that supplies weapons to both sides, so yes, any claim of moral high ground by the Americans is hollow. On the other side, I must recognize that all the wars fought by the American armed forces in the last decades, except the last Iraq war have been drivend by realpolitik, the sugar coat of democracy and freedom is for comsuption of the American public.

Re:First strike?

[joocemann]

You made that all up. Recon, imint, humint, etc, are all necessary and effective in pre-war times. Your little assumptions about what we are capable of are naive and also foolish.

Re:First strike?

[CrimsonAvenger]

You mean like this woman who claimed these bullets hit her house:

Well, they could have hit her house - guys drop things all the time, and if you're trying to reload a magazine in a chopper, they're going to come down somewhere....

Re:First strike?

[joocemann]

Thank you. This fsckmnky guy is so naive its laughable and yet scary to think someone would speak so strongly about a field they clearly have no understanding of.

No, slashdot or cspan, with wikipedia, does not a professional make

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

They sure shot a lot of SAMs at something they "didn't intend to down"... why would they do that?

(Incidentally, this book is a pretty interesting read if you're into this stuff...)

Re:First strike?

[Martin Blank]

If they had an S-400, yes. Russia is hesitant about supplying them to most countries. Even its own backyard allies like Belarus aren't trusted with them. Russia recently canceled an order from Iran for an older S-300 system, and even China doesn't get full documentation on the system despite being one of the bigger customers.

Re:First strike?

[Martin Blank]

The U-2 as heavily used in Desert Shield and in the lead-up to Iraqi Freedom. It has a loiter ability that the SR-71 (and probably any other manned, high-speed recon aircraft) lacked due to its speed. It's also known to fly higher than the SR-71, which is believed to have reached 85,000 to 90,000 feet (or more) on occasion.

Re:First strike?

[jklovanc]

Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims, and attacking a Mosque was unthinkable.

Sorry but the Muslim world is not united. There have been a number of wars and lesser conflicts between Shi'a and Suni Muslims. There are a number of countries where the Shi'a minority is oppressed by the Sunni majority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi'a%E2%80%93Sunni_relations

Re:First strike?

[ThePeices]

Since when was the cost of munitions ever a factor in US military thinking?

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

Hmm, 70K feet is listed as service ceiling for U2, so if that is higher than 90K, it must be some form of new math.

Re:First strike?

[turbidostato]

"A aerial reconnaissance is not an attack, much less a first strike by any definition."

An aerial incursion into the sovereign space of a foreign nation is certainly much of an attack. It might not be a casus belli but it is still an attack.

How else would you consider Iranian military drones flying over New York?

Re:First strike?

[chrb]

Funnily enough, Christians have always been the majority of casualties in terror attacks by Christian fundamentalists too. The Catholic Church once ordered armies to wipe out the Cathars - another branch of Christianity - resulting in the massacre of over one million men, women and children. The Thirty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, hundreds of thousands dead, all carried out by feuding groups of Christians. Religion...

Re:First strike?

[LifesABeach]

I think it was, unless one is reading challenged.

Re:First strike?

[rapidreload]

* Assassinations of Iranian scientists (the ones we know about: Majid Shahriari, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani (survived), Darioush Rezaeinejad)

Wait... the CIA had to kill this Majid Shahriari fellow TWICE? Was he a zombie or something? Aim for the head you fools!

Re:First strike?

[blind monkey 3]

It's possible they took control of the UAV. This would gel with what NATO said regarding "losing control" of a drone.
The type of drone appears to be one that would not be used in Afghanistan (uses stealth technology, not required in Afghanistan as they do not have air defenses) --either targetted at Iran or Pakistan imo.

Re:First strike?

[darkmeridian]

This is also why US drones do not carry top of the line stealth or avionics technology, and why special forces teams are sent to recover downed drones in hostile territories, anyway. IIRC, there was a US aircraft that was downed and recovered by Russia. The Russian PM showed a piece to the US ambassador to taunt them about it. The Skunk Works guys were like, um, that's like a generation or two ago, and they're still learning from it? LOL!

Re:First strike?

[darkmeridian]

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.

Re:First strike?

[darkmeridian]

America has been probing enemy air defenses since the Cold War. Operation Home Run was one in a series of operations that sent bombers stuffed with electronics into Russian territory to sniff where the defense radars were. At first, the bombers had to fly in international waters. But then the Russians would simply refuse to turn on all their radars to prevent their detection. Therefore, the US started to have their bombers suddenly divert into Russian airspace at a mad dash, which forced them to turn on their radars and shoot down US aircraft. Quite a few were lost in this manner. Both sides didn't make a big deal out of it because they didn't want a nuclear war. The families of the killed aircrews were told that their loved ones died in training accidents. Two hundred Americans and 40 aircraft were lost.

Re:First strike?

[darkmeridian]

This is bullshit. We have been patrolling enemy countries for their SAM and radar sites since the Cold War. Even stealth aircraft can be seen on radar, and their flight paths have to be routed around radar sites. When the First Gulf War was initiated, the first shots were fired by Apache helicopters that infiltrated Iraqi airspace by flying low altitude then blowing up a radar site. Perimeter air defenses are blown up by cruise missiles and the like to permit stealth aircraft to fly in and blow up other air defense systems. Only then do non-stealth aircraft with anti-radiation missiles come in to play.

Re:First strike?

[couchslug]

I know the Cold War may as well have been the War of the Roses to most people nowadays, but this stuff was routine and there were plenty of shootdowns of MANNED aircraft probing Soviet and Chinese airspace.

It's only a UAV. So what? That's why we get meat out of the cockpit.

Re:First strike?

[Luckyo]

"Probing air defenses" = flying a fighter/bomber/civilian-looking craft just barely over borders, and using your surveillance network to monitor who responds, when and how.

This is a constant and ongoing process, that utilizes MANNED aircraft for probe itself, and unmanned for reconnaissance. It assists first strike planning by giving information on which targets to prioritize to maximize disruption of chain of command and response speed and quality.

Re:First strike?

[couchslug]

"My Persian cooworkers have a social app that tracks when people on the ground see the planes"

How do they tell the country of origin from the ground when the aircraft is at altitude? If they can SEE them that close they can PHOTOGRAPH it for proof. Pics or it didn't happen.

US fighters would be taking a considerable risk of loss from "ordinary" attrition causes such as engine failure. UAVs would be much more plausible...

Iran does have functional fighter aircraft capable of getting within missile range of intruders. Phantoms and the odd F-14 are now elderly but can carry missiles just fine.

Re:First strike?

[El Torico]

Rome didn't have nuclear weapons; we have thousands.

Re:First strike?

[Khashishi]

Why do they need to prove anything? It's not a big secret that US is spying on Iran with drones.

Re:First strike?

[cavreader]

Iran has made this claim many times and has failed to produce any evidence every time. This time they claimed the drone was still in good condition so why not publish a picture. Mean while some of their key military installations and personnel are getting destroyed with impunity.It still puzzles me that people always give Iran and other similar country the benefit of the doubt when ever they make a statement like this.

Re:First strike?

[Martin Blank]

The publicly-acknowledged service ceiling is not the same as the actual maximum altitude. A number of other sources place the maximum altitude at 90,000 feet or higher.

Re:First strike?

[icebike]

The same applies to the SR-71.

Or did you forget that bit?

Re:First strike?

[lexsird]

I am more concerned with Pakistan right now in their tizzy fits still. Afghanistan, can we just leave now? Seriously?

We have better things to do with our time and money. We have infrastructure to rebuild HERE and our industrial system needs an overhaul. Unless they are all in canoes and paddling here across the ocean blue, I don't care. Iran is great at sabre rattling, but it's population is all young and modern and not our problem. They patiently are waiting for the old to die off in a polite way, I think.

Peace is cheaper and we can spend the money on the space race. Aerotech and space industry need funding, not just defense. Where is our Star Fleet? This pesky petty war stuff is grating on my last nerve, it's distracting from infinitely more important things.

Re:First strike?

[AmiMoJo]

A aerial reconnaissance is not an attack, much less a first strike by any definition.

Try to imagine the roles reversed for a minute:

Iran has a large and powerful military with the latest high tech weapons, and could crush the US in a matter of weeks. Iranian politicians talk openly about the possibility of military strikes or invasion, and Iran is constantly spying on the US with satellites, drones and operatives on the ground. Iran invaded Canada on a lie and effected "regime change", and furthermore is widely seen in the west as being at war with Christianity and the American way of life. Mexico has nuclear weapons and is good friend of Iran, and is waging an active cold war against the US.

Iran is doing everything it can to prevent the US getting nuclear power or weapons. The US is determined to get nuclear weapons because they are the one thing that will definitely prevent Iran from invading, and to develop ICBMs to deliver them to Iranian soil and guarantee Mutually Assured Destruction. Iran keeps bringing new sanctions against the US via the UN, and ordinary US citizens are suffering because of it.

Maybe you can start to understand why Iran behaves the way it does, and why the actions of the US and Israel are just making the situation worse.

Re:First strike?

[RivenAleem]

You can shoot down a surveillance drone with little or no repercussions. To shoot down a manned airplane risks killing the pilot. Some random terrorist isn't going to have an opportunity to shoot down a U2, it would have to be Iranian military, and one would hope they will pause and think before taking a shot at a person. A drone is another matter, taking one of them out involves no loss of life, so they can be used as target practice.

Re:First strike?

[Eunuchswear]

For that matter, until either the other side admits to losing the drone, or Iran coughs it up to a recognized 3rd party, like the UN for example, it's just propaganda on Irans part.

ISAF have already admitted the loss of a drone. Doesn't prove that Iran shot it down of course.

Re:First strike?

[Eunuchswear]

Indeed most of the technical hacks(like the discovery of taliban troops with tv's capable of receiving drone transmissions are done by iranians.

Got a source for the Iranians working with the Taliban, their hated enemy?

Re:First strike?

[tehcyder]

A aerial reconnaissance is not an attack, much less a first strike by any definition. Sure it's pisses off the target, and is subject to being shot down, but nobody considers it an act of war, that takes killing somebody or capturing/taking something/somewhere.

No, an act of war can be something relatively minor. Think of the War of Jenkins' Ear. Spying can be taken as an act of war if the two countries involved are onpoor terms.

Re:First strike?

[Richard_at_work]

You are assuming that *every* radar site needs to be repositioned, and that *every* radar site was exposed in the first overflight - most militaries double up on the coverage ability so there are no gaps while equipment is redeployed.

The only way to sort it is to send in SEAD strike forces in the first wave - once the shooting war starts, pretty much everything lights up and thats when you hit it.

Sort of like wack-a-mole.

Re:First strike?

[jgtg32a]

Are you confusing HOMERUN with a different project? Wikipedia doesn't say anything about any losses with that project. I'll be among the first to criticize Wikipedia, but little facts like people dying is something that I do trust Wikipedia to have.

Re:First strike?

[El Torico]

We have thousands of spare batteries for them too. Save your pity for yourself, wretch.

Re:First strike?

[wagnerrp]

Each overflight will only turn up a subset of the positions, and in the subsequent duration after an overflight, that information will go stale and some may be wrong. Repeated overflights will turn up new ones, refresh old ones, and potentially show some no longer exist, giving a number of locations that can be targetted by missile attack before sending in SEAD aircraft, as well as a general idea of AA concentration to allow more efficient deployment of SEAD aircraft. Just because the information is not 100% accurate does not mean it is not worthwhile.

Re:First strike?

[schlachter]

Only the US isn't run by religious fanatics claiming it's intention to wipe Mexico and Iran off the face of the Earth, while coming very close to gaining the means to do so.

The US had good relations with Iran before the religious fanatics took over.

Re:First strike?

[Forbman]

Wrong. Shia & Sunni have been at each others' throats for a while. Look at the tension in Saudi Arabia between its Sunni royal family and majority Shia rabble...er, general population. Or Iran arming Hezbollah & Hamas, blowing up fellow Muslims in Lebanon & Gaza Strip to get political power.

Or even Indonesia and Bandeh Aceh, before the Tsunami.

Re:First strike?

[Forbman]

May not even be to map them. Some of it will be to identify which specific mobile radar sets are where (they probably can identify some radar sets to the specific unit due to signal differences, etc), how long other radars take to come online after the call goes out, how long it took them to move to where they are now compared to the last time, how much other C3 traffic pops up (to identify all the other non-radar transmitters are, aka communications nodes)... There's lots of more behind it than "let's see where all their radar sets are".

Re:First strike?

[Forbman]

depends on the cost of the munition (B-2, F-22...)

Re:First strike?

[Galestar]

So because one group of christians was radical, all christians must be radical amirite?

Re:First strike?

[anonymousNR]

Lets hope hollywood makes some good movies from this war, it has been pretty boring after the cold war ended.

Re:First strike?

[Galestar]

Given the credibility that the U.S. has, I wouldn't necessarily assume that they're being above the board without more information.

FTFY. inb4 more american propaganda about how "Iran committed the first strike"

Re:First strike?

[Forbman]

For one, the US creates more diesel as a by-product of its domestic gasoline production than it can consume, despite its refineries being optimized for gasoline production, so it exports the diesel byproduct to Europe. European refineries export gasoline back to the US, for similar reasons.

Re:First strike?

[Hognoxious]

RAF Flyingdales

As immortalized by Jethro Tull's Flyingdale Filer?

Re:First strike?

[jbeaupre]

Iranian and Persian is the same thing

The Azerbaijanis and Kurds in northern Iran would beg to disagree. Same for a dozen other non-Persian Iranian groups.

The 30 million Persians outside Iran will also be surprised to learn they are actually Iranian.

Seems the typical ignorant American is far smarter than you.

Re:First strike?

[DarthVain]

So Mexico is Israel? Don't both parties need nuclear weapons to have a cold war?

Re:First strike?

[Martin Blank]

Not at all. I never specified any exact maximum altitude for either plane. Here's what I said:

[The U-2 is] also known to fly higher than the SR-71, which is believed to have reached 85,000 to 90,000 feet (or more) on occasion.

Ordered differently, the SR-71 is believed to have reached 85,000 to 90,000 feet (or more) on occasion. The U-2 is known to fly higher than the SR-71.

To expand on the point, some publications suggest a capability for 100,000 feet for the SR-71, though I think that's pushing it because even at Mach 3+, it's hard to get enough oxygen into the engines. It's easier to believe that the simpler, subsonic U-2 (or at least some variants of it) has a 100,000-foot capability, maybe 105,000 to 110,000 feet. Later versions of the U-2, though, may have a lower maximum altitude because the engines got heavier as the power increased to handle the heavier payloads, and the difference between stall speed and max speed at those altitudes is never very wide.

Re:First strike?

[T Murphy]

I took the parent as referring to the odd accusation of Iranian border patrols apprehending those foolish enough to merely wander too close to the border. I haven't paid enough attention so I don't know whether there is any provable substance to such a reputation. Note he said expandable, as in they can change at a whim (if he was talking about conquering territory he probably would have picked a different word).

Re:First strike?

[koan]

Yep, we even had our version of Caeser fiddling while Rome burned, except our version was a wet brained, drug addled G.W.Bush playing the guitar while New Orleans sank.

Re:First strike?

[Sir_Sri]

Deliberately lighting them up is more strategic than technical. How deep can you penetrate before they try and do something about it? If you do this often enough they might get accustomed to you flying 100 or 200km inside their territory, a few hundred Km of uncontested flying makes all the difference between getting in missile range, and not (before they shoot back). All the while you're wearing down their supply of parts for their F14's (and other aircraft) as well, which will hopefully reduce their operational capability, without actually killing anyone or shooting.

You're also very interested in what they have defended, and from where. That's why these operations have combined carrier and land based aircraft. Iran is a big country, with a lot of potential nuclear sites scattered around, it's very important that you actually bomb the important ones if you're going to go that route. But you have no fucking clue where their serious facilities are. Which is the problem. Blowing up a bunch of centrifuges doesn't meaningfully set back their nuclear programme if they have a bunch more somewhere else, and that applies to every part of the nuclear programme.

The rhetoric for war is as much from their side as yours. They threaten to wipe out the Israelis, the sunnis aren't to fond of a growing Iran and they're all squabbling over these things, and you're in the middle of it with allies on one side (the Sunni's and the Israelis) and interests (oil and geography for other goods shipped past). The rhetoric is also in large part intended to be a deterrent. You don't really want to bomb them, but you also want to make everyone who could help build nuclear weapons in Iran too scared to show up for work, all of this plays into that, knowing when the probing flights are is part of that. Whether or not you should be allied with the House of Saud and the Israelis is another matter.

Re:First strike?

[Sir_Sri]

I think that's how it works, people photograph the F18's off the carriers, F15's and F16s from Iraq, afghanistan, and Qatar (or bahrain, I can't remember which, big airbase there anyway), and log what they saw. I'm not say the app is somehow perfectly accurate, you're not going to see an aircraft in the middle of the night, but this has been going on long enough there's almost a joke to it, and everyone knows it's been going on for a long time.

The US flew no fly zones over Iraq for what, a decade almost, you accept the risks, especially if you aren't flying very deep in (this isn't an actual war, and these aren't no fly zones after all). There's basically a ring around Irans western, southern, and eastern borders a hundred or so Km deep where you'd be poking around, much more than that and you're into very serious risks (hence UAV's).

First Drone

[Ethanol-fueled]

Pics or it didn't happen.

Re:First Drone

[fsckmnky]

+1

Re:First Drone

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like that Bin Ladin character?

Re:First Drone

[rubycodez]

pictures of his death have been leaked

Re:First Drone

[koan]

yeah after they thawed him.

Re:First Drone

[Ihmhi]

Sure, we'll just get some photos with the dro-

Oh God DAMMIT.

Re:First Drone

[rubycodez]

I've seen them, as have millions of others

Re:First Drone

[rubycodez]

that's not the point, was only addressing the "pics or it didn't happen" philosophy. I can't know whether the pictures I saw were faked

sold to china

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
 

Re:sold to china

[the linux geek]

After all, the PRC would never invade any of its neighbors. Not Vietnam, not Korea, not India, not Russia, not Tibet. And they certainly wouldn't make constant menacing gestures against ROC-Taiwan or Japan...

The PRC is hated by every one of its neighbors except Pakistan and North Korea, which are pretty much rogue states.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

Yeah look at how well that worked out during the cold war, one half collapsed...who do you think will collapse this time China?

Re:sold to china

[postbigbang]

China's not in good shape either. The EU is bumming and the Euro is tottering on falling apart. All those spare troops in Afghanistan and Iraq need something to do.

WW3 could be on its way. The Afghanis need to decide whose side they're on, and so do the Pakistanis. Israel, who has lots of trouble making friends, will be wondering what to do. The Saudis will try to keep the peace by carrying a big stick, but that'll probably backfire.

My guess: the drone business goes away. Iraq needed to crow about something because times are desperate there, too. One stick poked up the hornets nest of the US Congress, and the swarm will come out; that vote will pass probably without hesitation. Then a lot of people die, unnecessarily, because the ego of several highly placed and powerful people will have been maimed.

Re:sold to china

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's because if you combined the 20 largest military budgets of the world excluding the USA, the USA's is still larger? Because the USA has half the world's aircraft carriers and every one is between 2-9 times the size of any other country's? Because their technology is far beyond anyone else's capability?

China's military budget is less than 17% of the USA's, and they're second in spending. Iran's is about 1%.

The USA thinks it can push other country's around militarily because it actually can. It's a good thing that they're not anywhere near as aggressive as nearly every country/empire with anywhere close to that kind of military dominance in history. Seriously, the world kinda lucked out with how this ended up when it did. That's not to say there aren't problems with this, and the US exerts a lot of undue influence, but most governments in history (and indeed, even today) would have expanded to directly control much of the world with that kind of power.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

The way you wrote that I can see you shrugging your shoulders as though it's as common as the Sun coming up, isn't that sort of complacency what got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, the war no one can "win".

Re:sold to china

[seyyah]

After all, the PRC would never invade any of its neighbors. Not Vietnam, not Korea, not India, not Russia, not Tibet. And they certainly wouldn't make constant menacing gestures against ROC-Taiwan or Japan...

Not Tibet???

!

Re:sold to china

[russotto]

China has too few of those to go to the mat with the USA. Russia exaggerates the number of active warheads it can maintain, has half that of the USA.

If you can reliably deliver even 20 warheads to the US on a second strike, you've got more than enough to keep even the most hawkish of politicians or generals from wanting to get into a nuclear slugging match.

Re:sold to china

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the world kinda lucked out with how this ended up when it did.

What makes you think it's over?

Just wait until resources like oil and water really start to get scarce. Hold onto your hat, you ain't seen nothing yet!

Re:sold to china

[schwit1]

All you need is 3 detonated at high altitude and the US is finished.

Re:sold to china

[ganjadude]

thats the thing, after a 1st strike on america with nukes...there will be no second strike

Re:sold to china

[postbigbang]

I hope not. Yet I'm an old man. I've been watching wars develop for a long time. It's not a shrug, it's a feeling like: we've been here before, and it could get ugly, quickly, with a lot of loss of life.

Re:sold to china

[goarilla]

It's easier to play the defense game than the conquering game, just look at vietnam.

Re:sold to china

[gedankenhoren]

"Iran will sell this drone to China, I'm sure."

It may not fetch so high a price (assuming truth of claim, integrity of wreckage, ...), if wikipedia/aviation weekly can be trusted: "The design lacks several elements common to stealth engineering, namely notched landing gear doors and sharp leading edges. It has a curved wing planform, and the exhaust is not shielded by the wing. Aviation Week postulates that these elements suggest the designers have avoided 'highly sensitive technologies' due to the near certainty of eventual operational loss inherent with a single engine design and a desire to avoid the risk of compromising leading edge technology."

Re:sold to china

[hedwards]

We could have won the war in Afghanistan if not for incompetent planning and lack of commitment. Also, pissing off all the neighboring countries really didn't help thing.

Ultimately, the Bush administration lost interest in the war and kept fighting it purely out of habit. You're not going to have success fighting multiple wars at the same time, while refusing to draft or make the decision to put your economic resources to guns rather than butter. Also, there was never a particularly meaningful commitment to the logistics necessary to win.

But, that's how it's been since WWII, the hawks that demand the wars don't seem to ever think about the logistical and practical aspects of doing these things, and certainly never ask the citizenry to make the necessary sacrifices.

Re:sold to china

[hedwards]

Vietnam's a bad example. It was being run almost entirely by President Johnson with very little input from actual experts. There were kill limits and supply problems. It's hard to say what would have happened if the President had divested most of his power to generals to use or if there had been a similar commitment to supplies as there was to ordnance.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

I agree the predictability of it is shameful, I wonder if we would have less trouble in the Middle East if we dropped Israel as an "ally".

Re:sold to china

[koan]

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.

Re:sold to china

[postbigbang]

The outcomes are uncertain. Israel has only placed superficial and cosmetic emphasis on goodwill towards any of its neighbors. It doesn't live in the future so much as in the past, despite entrepreneurial efforts to the contrary. It makes money in a modern way, but fights battles that are as old as recorded history. Yet Israel is a chess piece on a bigger board, and it knows this. The EU and US fear Arab unity, and with good reason: they're addicted to oil. Without oil, much would be different, but it makes a lot of wealth from a cheap energy source. Industrialized economies need energy. Yet they don't wise up.

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

Unlikely. The situation would be the same; the only difference being that instead of trying to protect Israel and Oil resources, we will just protect the Oil. And as lots of others have pointed - Israel is, unfortunately, still one of the best things in and about the Middle East.

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

And the reason no one wins IN Afghanistan is that there is no reason to be in there in the first place. That said, I would have settled for the systematic destruction of Al-Qaeda, instead of the buffonery that took place the first couple of years.

Re:sold to china

[Baloroth]

There is some question, actually, if China can even do that reliably. The US has a Ballistic Missile Shield (called the Aegis BMD) with both land and sea based components. The missiles are capable of destroying LOE satellites, too, by all accounts. And a huge number of allied nations are beginning deployment of similar systems. It won't be long now before ballistic missiles are no longer a reliable method of delivery, except when used in vast quantities.

And China has nowhere near the airforce capability to deliver nuclear weapons that way. Certainly not as a first strike, they would need to destroy the carrier groups first.

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

[Citation needed]

Re:sold to china

[TheLink]

China has too few of those to go to the mat with the USA.

How many cities can the USA afford to be nuked? If drugs, people and other stuff can be smuggled past US borders, I don't see why nukes can't. Of course you'd have to be way more careful since you cannot get caught even once, but given the same sort of resources it takes to build ICBMs, I don't see it impossible to get nukes into a USA that's still trading massive amounts of goods and services with the whole world.

China still needs the USA around, so they are unlikely to nuke the USA first - it's bad for business after all. From the POV of many other countries the USA is more dangerous.

There are also other places outside the USA that if nuked could cause the USA great harm too.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

No reason to be there?
What about the Caspian pipeline?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

What about rare metals?
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/afghanminerals/raremetal.htm

What about the fact that Iran is sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan?
In military parlance it's referred to as a pincer movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincer_movement

Re:sold to china

[koan]

"Israel is, unfortunately, still one of the best things in and about the Middle East."

I wonder how you came to that conclusion.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

Very insightful post.

I have often wondered who Israel's worst enemy is.

Re:sold to china

[cheesybagel]

If they cannot do it today, they will be able to do it soon. In addition to those DF-5A's ICBM you people are mentioning the Chinese have some rather laughable SLBMs plus they have supposedly been delivering their DF-41 ICBM to second artillery for some time now. DF-41 is supposed to have enough range to hit the entire CONUS rather than just the West Coast.

Re:sold to china

[wagnerrp]

Speaking of living in the past, the Arabs have been fighting among each other for a thousand years with no signs of relent. Somehow, Turkey managed to divest itself of that and join the modern world. The only time they other Arab states manage to unite is when they decide to get whipped up on by Israel.

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

The Caspian pipeline is being investigated because people in Europe are tired of being fucked with by Russia and their foreign energy policy. Afghanistan has no special significance other than being in a place where they MIGHT build it.
There are plenty of other places with rare metal deposits. Afghanistan does not have enough of those to warrant a full-scale invasion.
And finally, the purpose of waging a war in one country is a very bad reason to occupy another. You either drive through, or you make friends. But a pincer movement is not worth the cost of "winning" in a country.

So far, you have one hypothetical reason, one cost-ineffective reason and one highly temporary reason. Neither of which require winning anything in there.

Again - there's no reason to be in Afghanistan. Much better to build a working relationship with the people there, and drive the tanks through when needed.

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

By looking at the per-capita GDP and R&D efforts of the countries in the area. Why, what were you thinking?

Re:sold to china

[postbigbang]

The Turks are doing a good secular job. They still have their own past to rectify, ranging from Armenian relations to making peace with the Kurds and Greeks. Not that the US, where I live, has an untarnished past. I wish people would stop fighting their great great grandfather's wars.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

First: the mineral rights of the rare metals alone make it worth it as currently China controls ~95% of the World supply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/business/global/china-consolidates-control-of-rare-earth-industry.html?pagewanted=all
Second: the pincer movement is valid in a political sense, not so much in the hardware sense, but that's my bad for not being more explicit.
Third: but not last, is that the pipeline would increase revenue massively, the amount of money saved plus the volume shipped clearly makes it worth the effort, because the corporations involved profit both from the oil and gas that will flow and by supplying the weapons needed for war while the civilian citizenry around the World pays for the privilege of "Easy Energy".

Finally, there is clearly plenty of reason to be there and they already tried being "nice" about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unocal_Corporation#Controversy

Didn't you ever wonder why the US supplied the Afghans with Russian/US made weapons during the Russian occupation of Afghan?

Don't bother replying until you've read a book, even a comic book will do.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

Silly me I thought you were going to bring up human rights and that sort of thing.

Re:sold to china

[thoughtlover]

What is there to "win" in Afghanistan?

According to headlines over a year ago, almost a trillion dollars of mineral wealth was 'discovered'. I say 'discovered' because there are some skeptics.

Re:sold to china

[shutdown -p now]

We had an opportunity to be their friends/ally after the Russians left but we didn't.

You didn't have such an opportunity. You were not supporting all Afghanis to begin with - you were supporting the anti-secular Islamic faction that was fighting the secular government put in place by the Soviets and its supporters. Simply put, it was a civil war, triggered by Soviet intervention which supported the communist faction, and continued by U.S. and Pakistan which supported Islamists.

Islamists tolerated you infidels because you were providing them with weapons and training that were crucial in the fight. When they kicked out the Soviets and massacred the local communists together, extremists (Taliban) turned onto more moderate Islamists (what later became Northern Alliance) and pushed them out of most of the country.

At no time the fight was about "democracy", "freedom", or other such nonsense. It was about whether it'd be a secular dictatorship aligned with Soviets, or an Islamic theocracy not aligned with them. Both would hate your guts. Your politicians just assumed that the latter would be easier to deal with, because it was not, back then, so prominent - not enemy #1.

Re:sold to china

[reve_etrange]

Let's not forget Burma now...

Re:sold to china

[koan]

That is an excellent description of what happened, so I have a question in your mind which would have been easier to deal with, the religious zealots or the communist?

Because one way or another (as we have witnessed) that land is going to be used.

Re:sold to china

[shutdown -p now]

I have a question in your mind which would have been easier to deal with, the religious zealots or the communist?

Easier for whom? :)

On a more serious side, obviously, so long as USSR remained in the game, Afghanistan would be aligned to it - meaning Soviet military bases on Pakistani border (and a Soviet-friendly India on the other side... it's precisely why Pakistan helped mujahideen so much, they had a lot at stake in that conflict!). On the other hand, given what Pakistan is today, perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

After USSR collapsed, though, commies in Afghanistan were destined to fall either way. It would have taken longer if U.S. didn't support mujahideen, but Pakistan support alone would be quite enough to wrap it up eventually. Maybe if someone took out Pakistan, then there was some hope for Afghanistan as a viable sovereign state which wouldn't be a theocracy...

For Afghanis themselves, I think Soviet Afghanistan would have been better in the long run. Soviets actually heavily invested in Afghani infrastructure, even before propping up communinsts - building roads and railroads, factories, hydro dams etc. Here is a list, though I won't vouch for its correctness. When they had a puppet government in place, they've also started funneling money for the latter to build schools, hospitals and the like, to increase popular support (ironically, this actually generated some resentment in more conservative parts of the country, because Soviet-trained professionals often deliberately stomped on local values - e.g. a male doctor inspecting a female patient, or boys and girls studying together in schools).

Needless to say, most of it all went to hell under Taliban. Given the choice between a dictatorship that actually works on building up the country's economy and raising its standard of living, and a dictatorship that's mainly busy ensuring that all women cover their faces and preparing for Armageddon, I think the rational choice is pretty obvious.

Re:sold to china

[couchslug]

Most wars historically are "rearranging the furniture" rather than Total War with overwhelming conquest.

Re:sold to china

[izomiac]

The US does such things because it benefits the US. Having the strongest military and being a keystone of the world economy affords one the ability to do so with near impunity. Historically, the US has never been subservient to a supernational organization, and the US serves itself, not the world.

IOW, it's difficult to compare the US to other countries. Economically, the GDP of the US sits at $14.5 trillion, compared to China's $5.9, Japan's $5.5, and Germany's $3.3. The whole European Union is comparable, at $16.2. Militarily, the US spends $687 billion, compared to China's $114, and France's $61, to speak nothing of the huge historic benefit accumulating from WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. The European Union lacks a unified military, but for the sake of argument spends $300 billion total per year. So, while the US is a "country", it's much closer to being a hegemony than being "just one of the ~200 countries of the world". Another way to look at it is that North America, Europe, and Asia are comparable, but the US dominates the former, whereas the latter two are divided into varying numbers of big players.

Re:sold to china

[ThePeices]

He made a mistake, which can be easily corrected with some re-education.

Tibet was always part of China, so technically, they did not invade another country. The military only turned up because they heard that the scenery was particularly pretty, most especially at sunrise.

May the Dear Leaders live forever.

Re:sold to china

[ThePeices]

Gotta love the American mindset.

Yep, they single-handedly won the WORLD war ( just like they always win the World Series ).

Im sure that the rumours that other Allied countries were involved is just that...rumour.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

Yep, pretty hard to tell who won but it's always easy to see who lost.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

I believe it was between the Allies and the Axis of which the Allies won and the US was a part of that.

Re:sold to china

[DigiShaman]

On July 9, 1962, Starfish Prime was conducted above the Pacific at high-altitude with a yield of 1.4MT. It knocked out 300 street lights and a microwave linked telco station killing phone calls for many of the Hawaiian islands. Months later the radiation killed solar arrays on seven satellites.

Today, the yields are much higher and our electronics are far far FAR more sensitive to EMP. You can thank the invention of the microchip for that. Vacuum tubes are hardened for the most part. I would imagine modern military equipment as well. But non of the industrial and consumer ICs (microchips) can't withstand an EMP. The effects leave permanent damage as the individual gates "pop" like a fuse from the flux. Everything and anything sensitive enough becomes a worthless pile of junk. Bricked for life.

Here's a scenario that would happen if a high-altitude thermonuclear bomb went off above New York city. Runaway1956 notices a flash in the sky. You think it was a camera flash, but notice all power going off in and around buildings and the streets. Instinctively, you go to check the time on your cell phone. It's dead as doornail. You attempt in futility to reboot the damn thing. Even going so far as to pull the battery. Toast. Your co-workers wrist watch stopped working the moment the flash was noticed. Turns out everyone else has the same problem. You decide to look out the window from the 19th floor of the building. There is no traffic moving. Only a handful of cars still have their headlights on, but the engines aren't running. You decide to run downstairs to start your car. Nothing. Dead. But the headlights work and windows still roll down. Nice, but useless. Reality starts to sink in. You, and everyone around you is undeniably screwed! Start walking, and find fresh water quickly. GTFO of town pronto!

Re:sold to china

[shutdown -p now]

Soviets didn't have the popular support back then. It's only in retrospect that such things are easy to objectively judge.

Re:sold to china

[gmhowell]

Err, just like we would have had less trouble in WWII if we dropped Britain as a "ally"?

Or are you the type of person who would throw his girlfriend or wife to the mugger, so long as you kept your wallet?

Considering what a trollop the girlfriend is in this case, the mugger can have her.

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

I thought it was obvious that Israel's human rights record is still better than that of the majority of the countries in the region. http://www.amnesty.org/en/annual-report/2011/middle-east-north-africa if you don't want to take my word for it.

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

Holy crap - you're confusing rare earth elements and rare metals? Dude, stop talking, you don't have a clue. And every single other reason you put up is similarly clueless. Including why the US wanted to bloody the Russians' nose in Afghanistan. Stop linking to wikipedia if you don't know what's even being discussed.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

If you're an Israeli.

Re:sold to china

[koan]

It's amusing that your argument now hinges around some apparent misunderstanding on my part involving minerals rather than the original topic we were discussing.
Reasons to go to war in Afghanistan.

Oh and here's another Wikipedia article for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element

Re:sold to china

[rubycodez]

Sorry, but most electrical and electronic things survived just fine, those were just a *FEW* failures. And that's nonsense that months later radiation did anything to solar arrays, geomagnetic or solar storms did that. The damage by EMP would be sporadic and unpredictable, not uniformly destructive, the pulse would be shunted harmlessly to ground too often.

Re:sold to china

[rubycodez]

of course there would be later strikes, as for example submarines surfaced and fired days later...

Re:sold to china

[DigiShaman]

1962!! How much infrastructure and consumer devices used Microchips back then? How many devices use microchips today? Of those, which ones still boot from ROMs vs flash memory or an HDD for software boot up? Our society is completely fragile to the effects of an EMP in comparison to 1962.

Re:sold to china

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Why is it that USA thinks it can push other countrys around so much?

You don't actually believe that any other country would behave differently if they were the leading superpower do you? What do you think Russia, Israel, China, Iran, Japan, ... would do if they were in our place?

Re:sold to china

[NeutronCowboy]

Yes, and your misunderstanding of what is found in Afghanistan, what China is currently producing 95% of and the reasons behind that production disparity is critical to understanding whether it is a good idea to go to war in Afghanistan. As is your misunderstanding of why the US was funding the mujaheedin to fight the Russians, your misunderstanding of the reason for the Caspian pipe and a geopolitical pincer movement. You don't understand what your arguments are actually about.
It's kinda like arguing that flame decals make a car go faster. You might be able to construct grammatically sound sentences, and you might even find some correlation data, but you still come across as clueless.

Re:sold to china

[TangoMargarine]

Has the U.S. technically been in a war since WWII? War requires a declaration by Congress. Korea, maybe?

Re:sold to china

[TangoMargarine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States </pedant>

Re:sold to china

[koan]

And yet you continue to debate it with me, what can be said of a person that argues with a "clueless" person?

Re:sold to china

[koan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

Now you know what war is really for.

Isn't that kind of the point?

[NotSoHeavyD3]

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.)

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that sending aircraft into someone else' airspace without permission is an aggressive act forbidden by international law and treaties that the US is a party to.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Delwin]

They do.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[geekylinuxkid]

a remote kill switch? that wouldnt happen. just imagine how many drones have been shot down so far... iran says one in july then changed their mind. so maybe one in many years of use. so you want to enable a mechanism that would self distruct at a push of a button. okay, so what kind of public outcry would happen if a drone malfunctions and self distructs on a miltary base possibly injuring or killing troops? it would also add to weight and probably decrease the stealth ability. so no a remote kill switch is not a good idea.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Delwin]

The problem with this is that those drones have encrypted radios and if they didn't get wiped in time closely guarded encryption keys. The radio has a remote-detonate so it should be OK but there's still a lot of other tech on that drone that we really don't want Iran getting it's hands on - not to mention China to whome it was likely sold.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Frequency Domain]

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.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[rastos1]

so you want to enable a mechanism that would self distruct at a push of a button. okay, so what kind of public outcry would happen if a drone malfunctions and self distructs on a miltary base possibly injuring or killing troops?

Indeed. I mean, what is on a military base except personnel? Tonnes and tonnes of explosives. That's clearly dangerous and should be banned. It's not like any other weapons have self-destruct capability.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[YrWrstNtmr]

so what kind of public outcry would happen if a drone malfunctions and self distructs on a miltary base possibly injuring or killing troops?

On any modern combat aircraft, there are enough ways to blow yourself up that a self destruct mech would not increase that danger. Ejection seats, hydrazine, rjrctor carts, and the normal bombs and missiles are there already.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[multisync]

It was likely made in China anyway.

It was made by Lockheed Martin.

Maybe the Iranians will update the Wikipedia article and let us know what those pods on the top of the wings are for.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[drgould]

The point, from Iran's point of view, is that it makes good propaganda.

The good news is that, yes, they don't have a pilot they can parade through the streets of Tehran and interrogate for information.

And if they manage to recover sensitive information from the onboard electronics, that's the fault of whoever designed the failsafe mechanism to prevent it. (It still beats putting a pilot's life at risk.)

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[failedlogic]

There's quite a bit of tech in these drones that I would hope doesn't get into enemy hands. I'd hope that there's a destruct capability that will blow all the sensitive innards of the plane to smithereens before it gets into enemy hands.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[ErikZ]

Forbidden? Really?

It actually says "This is forbidden!"?

Toss it under the "Aggressive acts" that countries do to each other all the time. For instance, Iran has been training and supplying people to fight in Iraq against US troops.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[khallow]

Perhaps, you ought to look up Cold War history sometime. This sort of thing is routine and should be. The little "aggressive acts" often prevent the big aggressive acts.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[v1]

a remote kill switch? that wouldnt happen.

Doesn't have to. Every piece of airborne tech like that is rigged in two fundamental ways:

1. software and firmware is encrypted, and the decryption keys are uploaded to the device when it is being armed - these keys are never stored and exist only in volatile ram. A series of serially-connected failsafes provide power to the memory storing the key. If any of them is triggered or damaged, the key is erased and the software and firmware on the device are bricked as a result. While the gear left onboard without software may be useful, it's greatly devaluated when you're going to have to try to develop software to run it, assuming you can even figure out HOW to run it. This system is both passive and reliable. A single piece of flak hitting a UAV is very likely to turn the UAV into a dead stick that will fall out of the sky as a result of software loss.

2. small explosive charges are placed on critical components and will be detonated if possible. This active system isn't guaranteed - a lucky hit could disable the primary and backup power (or triggering intelligence) for these explosives and they aren't to be relied as heavily upon. Hard drives for example on flight recorders have a small pack of explosives inside the hard drive to spray metal fragments all around the spinning platters to insure a fast, thorough erasure if needed.

Considering the sensitivity given by (1), and the slow moving predictable flight characteristics of these UAVs, it's not the least bit surprising that they get downed from time to time. Heck, a birdstrike could take one down. There won't be much of use when it hits the ground, and that's by design. Better safe than sorry. They'd much rather lose a unit from time to time due to oversensitive protections than to have an intact unit fall into enemy hands.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[phantomfive]

The US signed a treaty with Iran, saying that they wouldn't fly into their airspace? Do you really think this?

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Magnus Pym]

Absolutely. If this is true, this may well be a deliberate act of provocation, intended to get Iran's military to do something stupid or over-reach, which would give the US the excuse it needs to start the war which the war machine desperately wants.

This sort of thing happens all the time; Country A wants to invade Country B, but needs a `good/just/patriotic' reason to sell home and abroad. Enter the agent provocateur.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[khallow]

Welcome to the universe of "nothing works perfectly".

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Pharmboy]

so you want to enable a mechanism that would self distruct at a push of a button. okay, so what kind of public outcry would happen if a drone malfunctions and self distructs on a miltary base possibly injuring or killing troops?

We have stored thousand and thousands of nuclear weapons in bases, including some with MEGAton capacity. We still store thousands of kton versions, plus Daisy Cutters, dumb bombs and enough overall munitions to erase humanity, just in the USA. I'm pretty sure the military isn't freaking out about having a suicide capability for drones. As it is now, if high tech gets downed, we normally bomb the shit out of it with millions of dollars of smart missles (if we can in time) to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[http]

Wikipedia frowns upon original research.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[moonbender]

So you think unless the US has signed a bilateral treaty with another nation, it's free to violate that nation's sovereignty? And vice versa? That's not how things work.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[zippthorne]

Since they line up with the wheel wells, I'd say they're probably part of the retraction mechanism. Or they're there to look cool. Lockheed is pretty concerned with looking cool, after all.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[crow_t_robot]

I'll bet that it accommodates the landing gear. The position of the "bumps" and the perceived mechanical angle of entry don't appear to be coincidental.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[MrL0G1C]

For instance, Iran has been training and supplying people to fight in Iraq against US troops.

This is just propaganda BS, I've seen stories like this ripped to pieces. Think about it, Iran was at war with Iraq just a couple of decades ago, it's highly unlikely they'd be helping out the same people after 500,000 to 1,000,000 Iranians died fighting them.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

No biggie, we can cite the New York Times article lifted from the Wikipedia article the day after.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[chrb]

For instance, Iran has been training and supplying people to fight in Iraq against US troops.

Not really. Most of the people fighting US troops in Iraq were Sunni (Saddam, his Ba'ath Party and his military were mostly Sunni). The present governments of Iraq and Iran are both Shia and are closely allied (no doubt to the annoyance of the US)... removing the Ba'ath Party from power and installing a Shia government was a great move for Iran. There are even allegations that it was Iranian intelligence that tricked the U.S. into invading Iraq through the use of double agents and false intel: US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war:

Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq... "It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi." .... "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy."

Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?

"The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator. Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces."

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[khallow]

This is just propaganda BS, I've seen stories like this ripped to pieces. Think about it, Iran was at war with Iraq just a couple of decades ago, it's highly unlikely they'd be helping out the same people after 500,000 to 1,000,000 Iranians died fighting them.

I give up. FIrst, the "propaganda" states that Iran is helping Shi'ite groups in Iraq while the leaders of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war were secular Sunnis. So on the face of things, they wouldn't be helping the same people they were fighting in the war. Second, there are obvious potential gains such as alliance with a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq or a weakened US.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[chrb]

Yes, forbidden; airspace, air sovereignty: "By international law, the notion of a country's sovereign airspace corresponds with the maritime definition of territorial waters as being 12 nautical miles (22.2 km) out from a nation's coastline. Airspace not within any country's territorial limit is considered international, analogous to the "high seas" in maritime law. "

Just because something happens, does not mean that it is legal. See for example: underage drinking.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[phantomfive]

There is no law preventing the US from sending unmanned surveillance drones into Iran. Nor is there a treaty, as far as I know.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[couchslug]

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

Keys expire and systems can be fitted with a variety of controlled and automatic "zeroize" switches.

Those problems have been dealt with for decades.

I was keying these every night in 1982:

http://jproc.ca/crypto/ky28.html

"Caption: The black block sitting on top of the KY-28 is the KYK-38 and it plugs into the front of the unit. This device is on display at the MARCOM Museum in Halifax. (Photo by Jerry Proc)

The device was also fitted with a internal shock sensor. If the aircraft crashed, the resulting 'G' forces would trip this sensor thus resetting the key. "

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[ThePeices]

Exactly!!!

Laws? Bah!, Laws are for the weak.

America is not weak!

They did Bad Things! This gives us the right to do whatever we want!

seewhatididthere?

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the *fuck* did this parent post get +5?

Forbidden? Really?

It actually says "This is forbidden!"?

Pretty much, yeah. Another poster has already replied with links. It's unbelievable you would question that.

WTF are you thinking? Ya think it's okay for Iranian or Chinese spy planes to be spotted over NY or CA?

For instance, Iran has been training and supplying people to fight in Iraq against US troops.

US troops which are in Iraq ... illegally, and had no business going in there? I guess that falls under ``"Aggressive acts" that countries do to each other all the time.''

Kinda like the violent, sometimes murderous mugger complaining about being beaten up while caught in the act, and wanting to press charges.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[ErikZ]

If that's not how things work, then this Slashdot article wouldn't exist.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Delwin]

Yes but there is still data that can be extracted from the keys if you can get them. That said I'm sure they're zeroized long before anyone got to the crash site. The hardware on the other hand is still well into the TS levels of classified. DOD doesn't want it getting out exactly what hardware is used for the communications on those things since that's by far the most vulnerable aspect of drones (remote control).

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[SuperDre]

uhh.. there is definitly a law against the US from sending unmanned surveillance drones into ANY country without permission, the US is part of the UN and therefore they also have to obey those laws. I guess you must be an american to think there is not, americans think invading any other country is legal.. think again.. IMHO Iran can have it's own nuke's as long as the US or any other country that threatens them also has them, and we all know that the US is the only country ever to unnecessarily use nukes against others and kill a lot of innocent people..

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[Solandri]

The point is that sending aircraft into someone else' airspace without permission is an aggressive act forbidden by international law and treaties that the US is a party to.

It's something that happens all the time. Usually all that comes from it is the intruding flight gets intercepted and escorted out, then the country later files a diplomatic protest.

Hostilities arising from such intrusions are the exception, not the norm, and almost always happen after visual confirmation of the target by a pilot in a chase plane. A shoot first, ask questions later policy leads to terrible incidents like Iran Air 655 and Korean Air 007. Given the size of the RQ-170 (wingspan estimated at 60-90 feet), it could easily have been a small commercial airliner or a civilian business jet.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[drinkypoo]

Just do what I do, write articles that cite wikipedia, someone will come along and cite them back in the article which I cited, complete with bibliographic reference to wikipedia.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[phantomfive]

there is definitly a law against the US from sending unmanned surveillance drones into ANY country without permission,

Which law?

IMHO Iran can have it's own nuke's as long as the US or any other country that threatens them also has them

It's good your opinion is humble, because it's meaningless.

Re:Isn't that kind of the point?

[phantomfive]

I did, thanks for your incredibly useless comment, though.

Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Maybe they were just trying to slip something in, to see if it could be done? Like, how good are their air defenses really?

A good mission for an "expendable" probe.

Who knows if this is the first one that has been sent in already . . . ?

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Anonymous Coward]

may well be, but it still comes down to violating another country's airspace.
Iran will try to make this look like an act of agression by the US. and frankly, they would be right.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

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.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I think you've got the whole geo-political situation upside down.
The only 2 countries that have created reasons for war (out of thin air) are the US and Israel.
I guess the last 10 years just whooshed by you.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[silanea]

Sure. Or maybe the US violated a sovereign state's airspace and had their aircraft shot down. Looking at both countries' track records for provoking armed conflicts through blatant disregard for international law the latter somehow seems the more likely theory.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

Theory. It's all just a bullshit theory. The ball is in Irans court *if* they actually have a drone. They have everything to gain politically by showing the world said drone. When said drone evidence doesn't appear, try not to cry. Just find a new reason to mold the geopolitical landscape to match your next theory.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Or maybe Iran decided to claim to have shot down a US drone because they need a propaganda boost.

The Iranians have released no photos. This is probably because there are no pictures of a RQ-170 except for a handful of grainy photos from Afghanistan. If they'd actually shot one down, they'd have plastered the media with photos of the thing.

It gets better if you read Al-Jazeera: they're claiming that Iran's elite cyberwarfare unit brought down the plane. No kidding. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2011/12/20111241599102532.html

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[russotto]

Iran will try to make this look like an act of agression by the US. and frankly, they would be right.

No more "aggression" than any other form of espionage.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[mSparks43]

In 2008 Iran used Russian S300s to shoot down several assault planes violating its airspace, which it tracked lifting off from Iraq some hours earlier, 5 hours later the price of oil crashed through the floor, and shortly thereafter, Lehman Brothers, who were heavily long oil, went bust. And you think a picture of a drone would change a damn thing?

Media prints what its told to print in "press conferences". This bears virtually no resemblance to what is actually happening in the real world.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

In 2008 Iran used Russian S300s to shoot down several assault planes violating its airspace, which it tracked lifting off from Iraq some hours earlier, 5 hours later the price of oil crashed through the floor, and shortly thereafter, Lehman Brothers, who were heavily long oil, went bust.

Do you have any links to any "evidence" or "proof" of any of this ? Or is it just another narrative from a wonky conspiracy website ? Some real documented connections would make for an interesting read.

And you think a picture of a drone would change a damn thing?

In the post above, nowhere did I mention "pics." I said, "showing the world said drone" and "drone evidence" ... not ... "a picture of a drone." IF they actually have a downed drone, they could produce serial numbers from parts of said drone, which can be correlated with manufacturing and military records.

Media prints what its told to print in "press conferences". This bears virtually no resemblance to what is actually happening in the real world.

Difficult to argue with you on this one. One must consider the source of a message, before ascertaining the accuracy of its content. Failure to consider the source, and incentives for producing any particular message, generally does result in an inaccurate picture of events.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[mSparks43]

But try:
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/psy-war/

Seems to link many of the sources, I was just going from what real people on the ground said at the time.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

Okay. So by your logic, its alright if I develop a nuclear bomb in my garage. And if my neighbors complain, and the police arrest me and shut me down for violating any number of laws, then the neighbors and the police are the aggressors ?

Iran is the one developing nuclear weapons in the neighborhood garage, against international laws, verified by international committees, and subject to international sanctions. That makes Iran the bad guy, not the international community for doing something about it.

If your neighbor, stood outside on his front lawn, and shouted "Death to the guy next door" on a regular basis, and then ransacked your house ( aka the British Embassy ) would you just smile and hand him food for energy to further his aggression towards you ? No. You wouldn't. You would treat him as the real potential threat to you his own actions have declared him to be.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[MightyMartian]

And how exactly would you Godwin yourself? By the late 1920s Germany was actually doing relatively well, admittedly with the help of the US and cheap credit, but still, the hard times post-WWI were over. What made Germany a basket case was the same thing that made most countries in the industrialized world basket cases at the time; the Depression.

At any rate, Britain had every right to cut off Iran from using its banks. In case you hadn't noticed, a bunch of Basij thugs smashed through the British embassy as Iranian police (doubtless the same guys that had been cracking skulls just a year before) stood by and watched. In other words, the Iranian regime used plain-clothed volunteer militiamen to attack what constitutes sovereign British territory.

That, my historically-challenged friend, does constitute an act of war.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[khallow]

In 2008 Iran used Russian S300s to shoot down several assault planes violating its airspace, which it tracked lifting off from Iraq some hours earlier, 5 hours later the price of oil crashed through the floor, and shortly thereafter, Lehman Brothers, who were heavily long oil, went bust. And you think a picture of a drone would change a damn thing?

The problem with this story is that it didn't happen and isn't plausible on multiple levels.

no crash of oil prices around the time of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the price of oil would have risen not fallen in the event of conflict in the Persian Gulf.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[NeutronCowboy]

The real people, in the case of your no-name blog with a significant conspiracy bent, are the Iranian news agencies in every single case. Every single one of your links points back to a story put out by Iranian news agencies, and the refutation of said claims by everyone around. There is no trustworthy source in any of the links.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

I'm not sure you understand what "sovereignty" means.

Just as no man is an island unto himself, no nation is either.

If the villagers decide they don't like the monster you just created in your laboratory, they will justify showing up at your door with torches. This is human nature.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[silanea]

If the police had first handed a nuke to your neighbor across the street with whom you have been exchanging death threats for decades but then turns around and forbids you to develop one, you may indeed see the neighbor and the police as aggressors.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[moonbender]

The area of an embassy is not the sovereign territory of the respective country. It is however protected by international treaties. I'm not sure what happens when this treaty is broken, the treaty itself doesn't spell it out (you can read it yourself, it's only 16 pages), but I'm pretty sure that you'd need to make a case in an international court. In any case an attack itself is not just cause for a war, it's also not a proportional response. I'm not sure what you think an "act of war" is, but not every act of agression is legal grounds for a war.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[mSparks43]

Prices fell because the attack failed and Iran did not become a new war (they were high because all the traders were expecting a war, as they are again).

The failed attack was in July 2008, Check Lehmans Stock price from then compared to the rest of the market.

I know it doesn't match the "official story", don't much care, I traded it and it worked out well for me, the official story would not have.

Part of it not turning into a war was the Iranian people not being told about it.

Look how angry they get at the news someone stopped using their bank.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[mSparks43]

Iran also already has nukes. They signed full military co-operation agreements with NK decades ago, even built the missile parts used for NKs recent ICBM tests.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

We can all party while waiting for the 12th Imam now I suppose.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

I was just about to paste this "KABUL, Afghanistan – "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status." They may actually have one this time.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Arker]

Iran is the one developing nuclear weapons in the neighborhood garage, against international laws, verified by international committees, and subject to international sanctions. That makes Iran the bad guy, not the international community for doing something about it.

Actually Iran has signed the NPT and been verified in compliance with that treaty over and over again. Even the latest IAEA report continues to show them in compliance with their NPT obligations. They have no bomb, they have diverted no uranium, and the very worst accusation that has any credible evidence behind it is that they may be interested in developing the necessary technology so that they *could*, should they decide to do so later, develop a nuclear bomb relatively quickly. This ' break-out capability' is something that many other nations have and have had for years - Japan for instance reached this point many years ago, and should they ever decide to develop the bomb they could do it quickly. There is no obligation in international law or treaty for Iran to refrain from this, it is not in violation of the NPT, and many other countries have the same capability without anyone making an issue of it.

Iran signed the NPT as a non-nuclear power and has so far complied with it. They are regularly inspected and the inspectors have always found them in compliance, even in recent years after those inspectors have been thoroughly politicised and clearly aimed at finding the opposite. By comparison, the US signed the NPT as a nuclear power, which exempts it from those intrusive inspections (which we know the US government would never allow.) The obligations of a nuclear power under the NPT however are clear and the US is in constant violation, both in failing to pursue nuclear disarmament and in blatantly co-operating with nations that have not acceded to the NPT in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Both Israel and India are non-NPT powers that have developed nuclear weapons with US assistance in blatant violation of the US obligations under the NPT. So the fact is that Iran has been playing by the rules and getting punished for it, while they watched their potentially hostile neighbors developing nuclear weapons in open defiance of those rules and being rewarded for it. Under the circumstances it doesnt seem possible for any fair-minded observer to conclude that the primary problem here is on their end.

I dont like the mullahs anymore than anyone else, but blatant war propaganda is still blatant war propaganda and fair is still fair. This dishonest demonisation of Iran and blatantly dishonest and unfair dealing with them doesnt harm the mullahs - in fact it helps them. The Iranian democratic opposition groups who the US claims to support are weakened with every rattle of the sabre. Threats of war, particularly ones based on such blatant dishonesty and double standards as are on display in this case, simply help unite the populace behind their current rulers and work to prevent democratic revolution in Iran, the only long-term solution to the problem of the mullahs.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

You should re-read the article. Iran has threatened retaliation outside its borders, for the drone they just found.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[russotto]

A diplomat with a micro-film camera is a lot less aggressive than a flying robotic killing machine, in my most humble opinion.

The RQ-170 isn't a killing machine, it's a spying machine. If it was an armed drone, you might have a point.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Arker]

You should re-read the article. Iran has threatened retaliation outside its borders, for the drone they just found.

And? That in no way contradicts anything I wrote in the post you were replying to.

Do you have any doubt that if the US were to shoot down a Chinese drone in US territory the US would be saying the same thing?

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

And? That in no way contradicts anything I wrote in the post you were replying to.

Yes, you did contradict yourself. Here is the quote:

Threats of war [against Iran], particularly ones based on such blatant dishonesty [by the US] and double standards as are on display in this case,

The US has not made a threat of war against Iran. Iran, on the other hand, has just made yet another threat of retaliation outside its borders.

Do you have any doubt that if the US were to shoot down a Chinese drone in US territory the US would be saying the same thing?

This statement shows your personal bias. You assume the Iranians are telling the truth, and you assume the US is lying. So far, the Iranians have claimed to have shot down a drone that was spying on them, and the US has admitted to losing a drone. Those are the claims. Im sure its no surprise to you that the US is operating in Iraq, right next door to Iran. It will also be no surprise to you, that the US will most likely say the drone malfunctioned, and the Iranians grabbed it. The truth of the matter will be some combination of the stories each side is going to tell. But you won't get that, because, you have already made emotional decisions and assumptions of truth and lies.

A US drone appears to have ended up in the hands of the Iranian officials. Thats all that can be reasoned to be correct thus far, after taking both sides of the story into account. The rest is your political bias.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[WindBourne]

I seriously doubt it. IF THIS IS TRUE, I suspect that this was actually in Afhgnistan and Iran or taliban were able to hijack control of it and push it into Iranian territory. As it is, Iran has claimed before that they had one and it was shown to be false. Personally, I tend to trust what comes out of AQ, as well as Al Jazerra, when it comes to reporting what we did, but Iran is whole other issue. They are constant liars.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Arker]

The US has not made a threat of war against Iran.

Hello, I dont know what planet you are on, but here on planet earth the US has been threatening Iran regularly for many years. Both with words, and with acts (of war) as well. This goes back at least to 1953, when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and installed the Shah. In 1979 they overthrew this dictator and the US has been both threatening them and committing acts of war against them constantly ever since. During the 80s we encouraged and supported Saddam Hussein in his brutal war against Iran. In 1987, and again in '88, the US launched direct attacks on Iran, sinking naval vessels and destroying infrastructure. Also in '88, the US shot down a civilian Iranian airliner killing nearly 300 civilians. The US has never apologised for this attack.

In the early 90s it looked like relations might finally be normalised, but in '95 sanctions were imposed by the US and relations quickly and predictably deteriorated as a result. By 2002 we have GW Bush publicly labelling Iran part of the 'axis of evil' and threatening them very publicly. Since 2003 the US government has acknowledged that it routinely violates Iranian airspace with surveillance flights, and also that it is engaged in covert operations inside Iran, primarily to encourage and support separatist groups. Even as recently as earlier in the week, Obama administration officials have not only continued Bush's policies in this regard, but also his bellicose talk. Each administration in turn has made it a point to announce that they would not rule out a nuclear first strike against non-nuclear Iran!

So it's really laughable ignorance, at best, for you to claim the US never threatened Iran. If you are looking for bias you need to go find a mirror rather than trying to project it on me.

So far as whether they actually captured a drone as they say, on that and that alone you are correct. They are perfectly capable of fabricating the incident. But given that the US has admitted to running just the kind of operation they claim to have intercepted, and running them regularly since 2003 at least, the claim is hardly an incredible one. Regardless of the truth about this incident, we know the US regularly invades their airspace in this manner because the US government has admitted the fact.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

Why not travel farther back in time, and convince everyone that Ghenghis Khan is after them ?

If we all get upset over Ghenghis Khan, we might be able to ignore the fact that every Friday for the last 30 years Iran shouts "Death to America! Death to Israel" after prayers.

You reap what you sow. Grow corn if you don't want conflict.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his Own Words

November 13, 2006 ... "Israel is destined for destruction and will soon disappear" Israel is "a contradiction to nature, we foresee its rapid disappearance and destruction."

October 19, 2006 ... "The Zionist regime is counterfeit and illegitimate and cannot survive" (as quoted by Iranian state television)

August 6, 2006 ... "They (Israel) kill women and children, young and old. And, behind closed doors, they make plans for the advancement of their evil goals." (as quoted by Khorasan Provincial TV)

August 4, 2006 ... "A new Middle East will prevail without the existence of Israel." (as quoted by Malaysian news agency Bernama website)

August 2, 2006 ... "Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented." (as quoted by Iranian TV) "Are they human beings?... They (Zionists) are a group of blood-thirsty savages putting all other criminals to shame." (as quoted by Iranian TV)

May 11, 2006 ... Israel is "a regime based on evil that cannot continue and one day will vanish." (to a student rally in Jakarta, Indonesia)

October 10, 2009 ... "The Zionist regime wants to establish its base upon the ruins of the civilizations of the region...The uniform shout of the Iranian nation is forever 'Death to Israel.'..."

Some quotes for you. "Axis of Evil" is pretty tame in comparison, and fairly accurate.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[shutdown -p now]

Given the state of relations between U.S. and Iran at the moment, I'd say that U.S. military would be negligent if they didn't have active intel-gathering missions against Iran, "act of aggression" or no.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[MightyMartian]

Attacking another nation's embassy is very much an act of war, and Britain at that point is within its rights to do as little or as much as it sees fit, and proportional response has nothing to do with it. If the Iranian people suffer because Iran is cut off from the City of London, then perhaps all those billionaires who inhabit the higher echelons of the Iranian power structure should spend a little on their fellow countrymen, instead of squirreling it away as proof against the revolution that will see the Ayatollahs stuck on spits for the amusement of the crowds.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[moonbender]

You can keep talking about "act of war" as if that meant anything, but the legality of the situation remains as I described it. I made no comment about the economic sanctions imposed by the British.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[chrb]

Okay. So by your logic, its alright if I develop a nuclear bomb in my garage.

Fine, if you are a nation state.

Iran is the one developing nuclear weapons in the neighborhood garage, against international laws,

1) There is no international law against developing nuclear weapons. 2) Americans seem to be generally against international laws and international courts. 3) Israel has nukes. You can't argue for a nuclear-free Middle East if Israel has nukes. And if Israel has nukes, then Israel's neighbors will want nukes.

You would treat him as the real potential threat to you his own actions have declared him to be.

Iran poses no threat to the U.S. Iran is not going to invade the U.S. Iran is not going to nuke the U.S. This is just another bogus alarmist "Iraq has the WMDs and will kill us all!" claim. Iran also poses no threat to Israel. As Jacques Chirac said, "Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

Look, the choice is simple:

1) Go to war. Invade Iran. The military predict it will not be a pushover like Iraq. There will be fierce resistance. Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers will be killed. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. The price of oil will rocket (Iran block the Strait) and there might be economic collapse. But in the end, after many lives lost and economic chaos, you will probably get regime change and control of the oil.

2) No war. Iran builds a nuke and is in the same position as North Korea, USSR, Israel, India, Pakistan, or any other nuclear nation. They have an expensive weapon that deters attack, but they can't never use it offensively because they will be destroyed by MAD doctrine. Life goes on.

(Seriously, the media pushed this whole "the world will end when North Korea gets nukes" story years ago, and they pushed "the world will end when Pakistan gets nukes" story years ago. They both got nukes and the world didn't end. Why do people still fall for it?!)

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[chrb]

Actually, the present Iranian government never signed the NPT. Their predecessors, the Shah dictatorship, signed, but they got overthrown by the revolution. Treaties signed by the Shah are not legally binding on a government that disposed of him (after the U.S. revolted against British rule, did the treaties of the British government still apply to the U.S.? Obviously not.)

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[chrb]

The US has not made a threat of war against Iran.

'Through 2008, the United States repeatedly refused to rule out using nuclear weapons in an attack on Iran. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review made public in 2002 specifically envisioned the use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis, even against non-nuclear armed states.[181] Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported that, according to military officials, the Bush administration had plans for the use of nuclear weapons against "underground Iranian nuclear facilities".[182] When specifically questioned about the potential use of nuclear weapons against Iran, President Bush claimed that "All options were on the table". According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, Bush "directly threatened Iran with a preemptive nuclear strike. It is hard to read his reply in any other way."' Wikipedia.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[chrb]

Is Israel part of the United States?

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[chrb]

The U.S. bombed an embassy and killed three people. There is little doubt that the bombing was deliberate. Should the people who carried out the bombing be prosecuted? Do the Chinese have the right to respond as much as they see fit, even if the response is disproportional?

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[khallow]

Somehow my original reply was mangled. I was also going to say that the S300 anti-air missile system apparently wasn't deployed at that time (being deployed either later that year or in 2009 due to issues between Iran and Russia) and media sources not beholden to the US government also fail to report this alleged incident in 2008.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Arker]

An interesting point, but the Islamic Republic of Iran has explicitly accepted the treaty anyway which renders the point somewhat moot.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Arker]

Nuclear bomb building is not allowed.

Your rant would make some sense were it targetted at a country that actually has a nuclear arsenal. There are many of these. Iran is not one of them.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[DigiShaman]

These are not simple analog RC airplanes. US military drone communications are supposed to be super secure. Most likely digital and encrypted. Perhaps they might have the ability to jam communications with noise and thus forcing the drone to whatever programmed fallback logic it's programmed for. But certainly not directional control of them.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[gmhowell]

Bullshit. That drone ain't dead until Netcraft confirms it.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Serious Callers Only]

Okay. So by your logic, its alright if I develop a nuclear bomb in my garage. And if my neighbors complain, and the police arrest me and shut me down for violating any number of laws, then the neighbors and the police are the aggressors ?

Ah, so you're saying that the US should in fact be concentrating on Israel, Pakistan, and India and preparing to invade them? All those regional powers have developed nuclear weapons recently, in violation of proliferation treaties, why are they not considered a threat and demonised?

The reason they are not threatened and subject to military incursions is quite simple; they do not threaten US interests, and (at least until recently in the case of Pakistan) are US allies - therefore they can do whatever they like, including lie about whether they even have nuclear capability (Israel) and develop nuclear weapons.

Aside from that, your analogy is completely flawed - a citizen of a state is in an entirely different position vis-a-vis their government and fellow citizens than one sovereign state versus another. Or perhaps you view the world as some sort of superstate which the US is in charge of because of their manifest destiny?

Iran has been steadily demonised by the US in preparation for war (and has an equally silly penchant for painting the US and UK as the great satan - at this point the propaganda on both sides is equally farcical). This will lead to war, perhaps an unintended global war, and is not something we should view lightly or see as some small policing action. The US has neither the money, nor the stamina, nor the men, to pacify Iran as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, and even if they could, would invading an entire region of the world be justified - at what point do the lies used to justify these invasions become too much?

If I was a US taxpayer I would be seriously concerned that it is viewed as acceptable to provoke yet another gulf state in this way. The US is already losing two wars of attrition in the region, and if they start another, the larger powers like Russia and China may take an interest in backing insurgencies, in which case the US will simply bleed till it withdraws in ignominy. There is no easy solution here.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[fsckmnky]

If I was a US taxpayer I would be seriously concerned that it is viewed as acceptable to provoke yet another gulf state in this way.

My stance for this entire thread, right up until the US released a report claiming to have lost a drone, is that the US wouldn't be so foolish as to provoke Iran intentionally by flying drones into their airspace intentionally for no net gain.

It's unfortunate, regardless of the reasons or motivations behind why it happened. I'm not personally choosing sides, or betting on horses. Nor do I have any solutions on how to convince the world community to stop blaming their own problems on someone else.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[silanea]

To be honest I cannot be bothered to look up the details of this conflict on Wikipedia, but that was actually my point: I do not recall an instance in which Iran provoked another country into war, but I do know quite a list of such events conducted by the USA. Which makes the theory presented by fsckmnky rather unlikely.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[silanea]

Have you ever considered that such bias may come from experience? The US have a somewhat substellar record for respecting other nations' territory - may I remind you of the Iran Air Flight 655 incident? - and for acting truthfully - ever heard of the Gulf of Tonkin incident? - so yes, many of us are biased against the US.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[mSparks43]

According to the same sources which say Iran doesn't have it now? despite Iran parading them on live TV?

The incident was the first time it was successfully "battle tested", which is also when you sudddenly see all the claims by western media that they don't have it and Russia won't give it them.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[khallow]

According to the same sources which say Iran doesn't have it now?

Read my post. Last I checked the year 2011 is after late 2008 or early 2009.

The incident was the first time it was successfully "battle tested", which is also when you sudddenly see all the claims by western media that they don't have it and Russia won't give it them.

IF IT HAPPENED. As I note, there's evidence to indicate that what you claim didn't happen, even to the point of Iran making announcements about shooting down "assault planes". All you have to do is come up with a citation to the contrary.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[E_Ron.Eous]

The assumption that Iran is telling the truth and that the US is not is a pretty good assumption. The assumption that the US has not made a threat of war against Iran is quite bogus as the US perpetrates actual acts of war against Iran (and anyone else who is deemed a threat) weekly. This latest incident is just another example of that. Were the situation reversed, what do you think the US would be saying?

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[WindBourne]

Have you not paid attention? We have had issues with our military network. I would not be the least bit surprised if we actually were cracked and Iran got control of it. If so, then you can bet on it that the DOD/CIA are making some MAJOR changes right now.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[DigiShaman]

If they didn't change the cipher prior to launch, than it was pure incompetence on behalf of the US military. Most likely, the drone malfunctioned for whatever reason and was safely captured on the ground. You can't really shoot it with a projectile at those altitudes and expect it to remain in one piece.

This thing is a technological treasure trove. It will be gifted to the Chinese (or perhaps the Russians) in exchange for protection. Count on that.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[plunderscratch]

...not every act of aggression is legal grounds for a war.

...mumble mumble... something about a hammer being one's sole possession

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[WindBourne]

Yeah, that last part was a killer. If they really have this intact, then China is going to have a heyday. Personally, I think that we are our own worst enemies. We allow our tech and electronic infrastructure to go to CHina and do not worry about it. Insane considering that they are in a cold war with us.

At this time, we need to change a number of things. For starters, the idea of using a smart phone for troop comm, should require that it be produced in some friendly nation, including our own.

Re:Poking / Probing Iran's air defenses . . . ?

[Patch86]

Fair enough.

So you'd be happy if (unarmed) Iranian military jets were circling over Texas, then?

Odd

[koan]

What a difference in detail

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9004290309

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=248067

I am dismayed at Israels constant call for war against Iran when it will be Americans fighting the war not the IDF, I wonder how much war rhetoric they would be spouting if the US didn't back them up.

Re:Odd

[MightyMartian]

Israel is just the loudest voice. The Saudis are just as keen to see the Ayatollahs taken down a notch. At any rate, it would be an air campaign (if it happens at all).

Re:Odd

[G3ckoG33k]

"I wonder how much war rhetoric they would be spouting if the US didn't back them up."

I think they trust the old saying "It is better to have your people die for our cause, than to let our soldiers die for a lost cause". No, that was no old saying, i just made it up. Sorry.

Re:Odd

[koan]

Really? Why does Israel have the "loudest voice"?

Re:Odd

[koan]

Wow that already shows up in a Google search pointing to your post, scary stuff...

"It is better to have your people die for our cause, than to let our soldiers die for a lost cause"

Re:Odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Why does Israel have the "loudest voice"?

In the US of A we have the AIPAC, Fox News (and their right wing nut listeners who thin we cannot have peace with Iran), and all of the Evangelical Christian nutjobs who think that any threat to Israel threatens their ability to get into Heaven or some such mythological nonsense.

That's why they have the loudest voice.

Here in the US of A, I have never heard the Saudi's (or any other Arab) voice against Iran. The only time I see anything is in foreign published sources like the Economist. Of course, here in the US of A, most of us think that Iranians are Arabs and Persians make rugs and breed cats.

Re:Odd

[Cwix]

Because they are within range of the medium range missiles?

IDK just a guess.

Re:Odd

[koan]

So are the Palestinians but you don't hear much from them, think again.

Re:Odd

[MightyMartian]

Because the current president of Iran has made numerous public declarations of wiping out Israel, and the regime is pursuing gaining nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them for some time now.

Re:Odd

[TheLink]

See also:

"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country."

From the movie Patton.

Re:Odd

[koan]

No that is not why Israel has the loudest voice, loudest meaning most widely heard, keep trying.

Re:Odd

[MightyMartian]

If I said, "Because of the evil Jewish conspiracy", would I be close to your answer?

Re:Not exactly the most reliable source

[Truekaiser]

other news sites are reporting this to like the ap. plus googling the name of the type of drone downed makes this even more interesting since it's one based off the stealthy 'flying wing' b2 bomber....

Re:technology on the drone wouldn't be too advance

[roguegramma]

The shape of the drone alone might have required hours of computing time to optimize for a low radar profile, so I'm not so sure that it was designed in a way to reduce technology creep.

Propaganda

[koan]

jpost is propaganda (well aren't all news media now a days)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerusalem_Post

It's start "According to the Historical Jewish Press, The Palestine Post was established "as part of a Zionist-Jewish initiative", and "Zionist institutions considered the newspaper one of the most effective means of exerting influence on the British authorities".[4]"

It has a tiny circulation therefore shill rhetoric is the key to increasing visibility.

Re:Nuke em

[koan]

What problems are they causing?

Re:Hopefully

[koan]

So you want people to be nuked?

Re:Nuke em

[broken_chaos]

Bad idea. Nuclear weapons haven't been used since the bombs dropped in the second world war. We do not want to reopen that door as a 'legitimate' military strategy.

HUH?

[Diggester]

Only source for this is Iranian state TV, and they've released no pictures. They've claimed before to have shot down drones and later backtracked, so I don't place much stock in this. Here's the al Jazeera article on the subject. Notice: Al Jazeera has been unable to independently verify this information, and there has been no confirmation of the attack from US authorities. Iran said in January that two pilotless spy planes it had shot down over its airspace were US-operated and offered to put them on public display. In July, Iran also claimed to have shot down a drone, but never shared video or photographic evidence. Of course, they never put the alleged January drones on display.

Re:Nuke em

[silanea]

They cause problems in the world by shooting down a foreign aircraft that intrudes into their sovereign territory? Interesting.

video of it

[Joe_Dragon]

http://www.mtv.com/videos/beavis-and-butt-head-season-9-ep-3-drones/1674141/playlist.jhtml

no, it is a response

[Colin Smith]

There have been at least two attacks against Iranian missile bases.
 

yup, i think thats pretty clear from his comments

[decora]

he doesn't know anyone in iran, he doesn't know any iranians, he just spent the weekend playing 'call of duty' and masturbating, but goddamnit, he knows foreign policy. and the number one thing we need to do is to violate the laws of war (which he calls 'faggot laws') and put weapons of mass destruction into a country without any formal declaration of war, congressional debate, etc.

because, after all, they shot down one of our robots.

  WindBourne can be found during days at his job as a Wal Mart security guard, where he protects us from terrorists by body slamming grandfathers face-first into the concrete floor because they "resist arrest".

Why are we provoking Iran?

[Dr. Spork]

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.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[ColdWetDog]

Replace "US" with "Israel" and you might be on to something. It's not like we've been especially good at controlling their behavior of late.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[Lumpy]

If we wanted anyone in Iran dead, it would happen. If it's "failed attempts" then it was just to send a message.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[WaffleMonster]

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.

My guess covert US involvement is at least partially to keep Isreal from feeling soo cornered it sees no alternative other than a unilateral strike against Iran.

For all practical purposes Isreal == USA. If they do something stupid we pay the price for cleanup / consequences.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[WindBourne]

No, it is Iran that escalates it to Women and Children. They have supported terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Israel that are bombing shopping centers LOADED with families. They are not even trying to come after the troops because we are to heavily guarded. So they butcher women and children. Hell, they SEND women and children to do their work for them. They are cowards like you.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[CodeBuster]

The correct response to this would be to remind the Iranians, in no uncertain terms, that actions have consquences. I'm sure that either the CIA or MI6 could deliver that sort of message in a way that wouldn't be missed by the mullahs.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[ThePeices]

WE the West?

As a non American and non Israeli, I find that pretty damn insulting.

You three can have your little spat, but leave the rest of us Western countries out of it.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[DigiShaman]

Intent. Terrorists actively target women and children where as with US combat units, they're casualties of war.

I can't believe anyone had to ask this silly stupid question. But it begged for a rational answer. So there you go. Now you know.

Re:Why are we provoking Iran?

[Lumpy]

You are talking government.

I am talking armed forces skill.

When it comes to sniping, it's the gear and training, only a idiot would try to tell me that Iran has better gear or training. We outclass Pakastan's best by a huge margin.

So speaking of ignorance... Maybe you need to back off your political rant and re read?

Re:Nuke em

[joocemann]

Agreed. Nuclear weapons should never be discussed in any sense beyond very last resort.

Many potential enemies have the ability to strike on US soil. We don't want to be the first to make transglobal nuclear strikes seem sensible.

thank you heinrich himmler

[decora]

the Ostplan never gets old does it!! lulz wut!

and you will be first into combat right?

[decora]

oh, i understand, the 'faggot commies' in the Army didnt accept you, because you are too 'big boned'.

life is hard when you are surrounded by faggot commies.

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[koan]

As I got older the thing that worries me the most is not the stupidity of people, that is with us forever, but how easily they are programmed to respond in a singular way to certain stimulus, Pavlovian nightmare.

Congratulations

[should_be_linear]

For whatever reason, in USA - Iran battle I feel USA is somehow more evil and aggressive side... and given that Iran is theocracy, thats quite an achievement.

Re:Congratulations

[Anonymous Coward]

... and given that Iran is theocracy ...

I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. ~ George Bush

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2005/oct/06/georgebushgod

Re:Congratulations

[DanDD]

In the USA - you are free to feel, and express whatever you want. Now, please go try expressing anything ani-Iranian in Iran and let us know how it goes, mkay?

Re:Congratulations

[CodeBuster]

Yeah they aren't the ones holding wars in neighbouring countries for reasons that were all proved false killing women and children

What do you suppose that Hezbollah has been doing in Lebanon for the past 30 years, to cite just one example, handing out humanitarian aid and rebuilding? Please.

they arn't sending planes over our territory

Because they've no planes to send. if they could, they would.

they aren't the ones creating a computer virus to disrupt our research

You mean they can't research and build a nuclear weapon without interference? Well, cry me a river.

pulling off assassinations illegally in countries we aren't even at war with

The US has been at war with Iran, at least covertly, ever since the hostage crisis of 1979; Inter arma enim silent leges

.

No reason not to believe them

[Colin Smith]

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.
 

Re:No reason not to believe them

[Colin Smith]

That was weeks ago. It's unrelated to the drone.

Have you ever had your attention span tested?
 

Re:No reason not to believe them

[blind monkey 3]

The UK embassy invasion was in reponse to the sanctions the UK recently placed on Iran. Iran had voted to expell the UK ambassador last week. Imo the embassy invasion could have been orchestrated by the more hard line factions of their political system to ensure there is no back down from the resolution.
Regarding the blowing up of the missile base, that would (imo) more than likely be by saboteurs - the US has declared (Mr Bush (Jr), continued by Mr. Obama) that they will fund and assist dissidents. Although stating it is not about regime change, I personally find that hard to believe.

Re:No reason not to believe them

[icebike]

Iran claimed it was an accident...

Of course they do. But when you look at the satellite before and after images widely published on the web you see three different buildings in separate areas of the base taken out with other buildings between them left standing. The damage looks like James Bond work as opposed to an airstrike or drone strike.

.

Re:No reason not to believe them

[Tablizer]

Or Scooby Doo

Re:USB sticks

[ColdWetDog]

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!

Re:our brave robots who gave their lives for their

[ColdWetDog]

Just a big bladder. Close, but no cigar.

Historical precedent?

[The Askylist]

Does anyone remember the drone that Iraq shot down on the morning of 11th Sept 2001? It was all over the news here in the UK just before some planes went awry. I wouldn't discount Iran's statements yet...

Re:our brave robots who gave their lives for their

[ganjadude]

Id rather keep my balls attached to my body, all while accomplishing the same goal than lose my balls. If i have the strategic advantage than im sure as hell going to use it

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[JustNilt]

he doesn't know anyone in iran, he doesn't know any iranians, he just spent the weekend playing 'call of duty' and masturbating, but goddamnit, he knows foreign policy

Thanks. I love spitting coffee out my nose; it makes my morning so much more enjoyable.

WindBourne can be found during days at his job as a Wal Mart security guard

I'd think more along the lines of a receipt checker. "May I see your receipt please, Habib?" While the Caucasian shoplifter wheels a big screen TV out the door.

Friggin' ignorant people bug me but I've learned to ignore most of them. They're loudmouth idiots who've never been there. As someone who has been there, done that, I find them laughable more than anything.

US - or Israeli dron ?

[jools33]

I wonder how the Iranians / Jerusalem Post can be sure this is not an Israeli drone - given that th US supplies billions of dollars worth of arms to Israel - you could assume that drone aircraft - manufactured in the US are included in this. In fact could be seen to benefit Israels position if this drone were misinterpreted to be US origin.

Escalation!

[md65536]

Want to start a war but need some help starting it? Send a paper airplane into future-enemy territory! With any luck, they'll take the next step.

American Military accidently nukes most of Iran...

[Lumpy]

In an accidential move, all of Iranian military bases and government buildings have been nuked.

"a janitor leaned on the button, I knew we should have bought a cover for it.", says Bgd General Sam Weisse, "With the Military cuts the senat is making we cant afford a $0.29 plastic cover or even a hand written sign that says, Do not push".

Questions as to why it looked like a elevator button and was near the elevators went unanswered.

Of course they shot it down

[Animats]

There would be political panic in the US if Iran sent a drone over the East Coast to have a look at NYC or Washington. Iran does have drones, and could launch one from a freighter in the Atlantic if they were so inclined.

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[WindBourne]

I love the way that cowards put words in other's mouths.
I am against many of our military actions. You can look through my old postings and find that I was opposed to invading Iraq and against NATO/O's actions in Libya.I have no desire to invade or control Iranian politics. America should have learned from all the garbage that was done by Europe, Russia, and our own actions. It is not in our best interest to interfere in another nation's politics.
HOWEVER, stopping iran, AQ, etc are exceptions. Iran has been behind a number of terrorists groups, etc. As it is, they provide massive support to sunni groups esp. AQ, while at the same time doing their best to kill them. Iran has NO INTEREST IN HELP SUNNI. It is that they want us more embroiled into the middle east so help create a nightmare.

BTW, I argue against things like Kyoto because it is actually STALLING America and the world FROM GETTING OFF OIL AND COAL. The world must quit burning both of these for fuel. Yet, items like Kyoto and neo-cons in the USA , stalls the US and the world. These kinds of actions by Iran and others pull us in to it (though I am ignoring what W/neo-cons did to America).

Lost drone

[bongey]

The US lost a drone last week, whether it really "went out of control " is another question. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45541622/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/#.TtvTI0BKhEM

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[WindBourne]

Wrong on all accounts. I know multiple 'Persians', who have relatives in Iran and they go on regular visits. I have little to do with wal mart, and am against the bulk of our military actions. I DO believe that we belonged in Afghanistan and had W/neo-cons done some nation building, we would have been out of there long ago. Never should have invaded Iraq. If you look at my previous postings, you will find that I did not think that Iraq has nukes or were trying to acquire them (I DID say that I suspected that they still had chembio weapons, but that is because just about every nation has a program going on one or both of them). Likewise, I have said that we never should have had any actions in Libya.

However, Iran is EXTREMELY active in the terrorist world. They are behind many operations. Hell, they provide weapons and funding to AQ, even though once we are gone, they will go after AQ themselves. They do today. They held many of OBL's relatives in hostage. Basically, they would not allow them to leave (I am not certain what the status of that is now).

Iran is working on nukes and is getting closer. The evidence is overwhelming. Even from my neighbors a number of them say that it is an open secret in Iran that they are working on nukes. A few say that it is simply about building civilain power. Yet, it should be obvious to all that nothing could be further from the truth. Hell, they are LOADED with oil and could continue to burn oil for all of their energy needs for several hundred years and not make an impact. Likewise, the amount of oil that they burn does not make a big impact on the amount that they can export. They have ZERO reasons to build nuclear power plants. If they poured just 1/10 of the money that they have put into nuke tech, they could have 2-3x the amount of oil coming out.

Yet, fools run around screaming that anybody that thinks that must have the politics of a neo-con. Sad that there is so little reasoning on /..

Re:Nuke em

[mbkennel]

No, that's false. The USA has a wider qualitative edge in non-nuclear weaponry. It is to the USA's advantage to eliminate potential use of nuclear weaponry from all sides.

Iran "has a history of expandable borders", when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran "has a history of expandable borders", when?! Please provide some details.

As far as I know, Iran was attacked by Saddam Hussein and that is their latest war. The modern Iran has not been around for very long, you know, less than a century. Before the former shah's Iran it was a European protectorate of sorts. Around 1980, the mullah's took over ruined most of what was available at that time.

An "expandable border" theory sounds like century old history to me.

Re:Hopefully

[koan]

So lets apply your logic from the Iranian perspective, still feel the same way?

Re:Hopefully

[zippthorne]

That show sucked. They maybe had three years of material (if you can believe the claims) that they stretched out to 6, resulting in a horrible ending that failed to tie up any loose ends not introduced in the final season.

I'm never watching a JJ Abrams show ever again.

Re:Nuke em

[WindBourne]

Disregarding their building of a nuke, they are feeding money, bombs, guns, intel, instructions to Taliban, AQ, Syrian dictators, Libyan Dictators, Bahrain terrorists, Yemen terrorists, Lebanon and Gaza terrorists, etc. Hell, they have been caught helping multiple groups within Iraq that are fighting EACH OTHER, to tie up America as well as Iraq. They are using WOMEN AND CHILDREN TO DO THEIR WORK. They happily continue to send more weapons and ammo to Syria to butcher their citizens. They did the same in Libya.

But, hey, no problems.

Re:Nuke em

[WindBourne]

We are not going to drop one. I am guessing that the original poster sees the issues with Iran. They continue to make progress toward their nuke and will have it sooner or later. Once they test it, Israel will likely fire on them.

Re:technology on the drone wouldn't be too advance

[wagnerrp]

Well, it all depends on how powerful of computers they had access to. It might have required hours, but it's more likely it took weeks to months.

Re:Nuke em

[koan]

You're just advocating mass murder again, the OP was discussing nuking entire cities for some perceived violation, (or did you forget to log in) what problems have they cause you that you would sanction wholesale slaughter of civilians?

As for your post, sure they cause problems for their neighbors and citizens, they being the religious leadership and the typical political leadership for that area, but every state has this to one degree or another, including the US (See internment of Japanese American citizens during WW2, black rights and the illegal testing done on them, slaughter of Indians with biological warfare, the war crimes of the US around the World in multiple theaters) your reasoning is faulty, your cognition below average, and your English atrocious.

Re:Nuke em

[shutdown -p now]

It would be pretty stupid for Israel to wait until Iran actually gets so far as testing their nukes.

My bet is that Stuxnet, those sabotages at Iranian military research sites etc are all part of Israel's strategy to delay the moment until they have to strike, and any later would be too late. That would be when the first missile with nuclear warhead is being deployed to the silo. Why delay? I'd imagine, to prepare the operation such it goes as smoothly as possible - Iran is not Lebanon or Egypt, and Israel will suffer considerable casualties if they go on, so they'd do anything to minimize that. More importantly, if they strike, it must be successful in wiping out Iran's nuclear capability - because if they don't, they've just handed casus belli on a silver plate.

Probing Iranian air space with drones to map it would be a logical part of such strategy - perhaps they are aiming to do what U.S. did in the Gulf in 1991, send the choppers ahead to clear out the SAMs for the main air strike.

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[shutdown -p now]

I DO believe that we belonged in Afghanistan and had W/neo-cons done some nation building, we would have been out of there long ago.

You can't nation-build in Afghanistan - it doesn't have a nation. It is, effectively, just a no-man's-land between several countries, with several ethnic and religious factions backed by those countries struggling forever.

Grenada, Kuwait, maybe Iraq

[roguegramma]

America has not won a single war since WW2.

Grenada worked out fine.

The liberation of Kuwait worked out well, it only got a bit more trying after expanding the mission to enter Iraq.

But I guess all that was "too easy" to count as a war eh?

Re:Grenada, Kuwait, maybe Iraq

[koan]

Then we get into semantics, Grenada was an "invasion" not a war, as for Kuwait we were just part of a coalition, (hard not to laugh there) but congress did approve it so I guess it was a "war" and you are right in that we won it if by winning you mean we returned control of Kuwait to out business partners.

I stand corrected.

Congratulations

[Sycraft-fu]

You are so single minded that you are willing to believe whatever Iran, a country that is known to make false statements for political reasons (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hATGOzv6YSmgeMY1zdYbdpyrG2cw) says is true.

Seriously, why would you believe this report as it stands? I'm not saying it is impossible but I'd damn sure need more evidence than Iran's claims. No independent verification, not even any pictures. Just "We shot down a plane and we are mad!"

Why would you believe that with no proof any more than you'd believe some random statement form the US government? Are you just one of those that are so anti-US that anything someone says bad about the US must automatically be true to you?

Seriously the operative part of the headline here is "claims". I'm not dismissing it as impossible but I sure as hell won't believe it with out some real confirmation.

Beats the "Frances Gary Powers" U2 method.

[couchslug]

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

Re:Those pathetic Iranians

[couchslug]

"They downed one drone, haha. US downed their airliner in their airspace with 290 pax onboard."

Good thing airliners are never used as weapons!

Re:our brave robots who gave their lives for their

[couchslug]

Sportsmanship in war is not an advantage.

Also, long-range artillery called, citing prior art.

Update to the Original Story

[wonderbar]

If what this update is insinuating is true, it would be a much more fascinating event.

[Updated, 3.30 p.m., Dec. 4, 2011: Some initial reports out of Iran suggested the drone had been shot down. But the semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, quoted a military official as saying that Iran’s electronic warfare unit had managed to take control of the aircraft and bring it “under their possession.”]

(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/iran-us-drone-afghanistan.html)

Re:Update to the Original Story

[wonderbar]

So cool. Seems like a really solid technical accomplishment. Assuming that it's true. Now, what would I need to do to get me a drone...

The cyber warfare unit managed to take over controls of the drone and bring it down, a military official said, according to the TV.
http://tehrantimes.com/component/content/article/93221

Hard to believe it was "downed"

[Thagg]

It's not terribly hard to believe that it came down -- it's a brand new system, and as it is a drone and not a manned aircraft probably is at risk of more catastrophic single-point failures.

But if a small, stealthy drone was taken down by the Iranians, I'd be shocked. Even the slow, big, horribly non-stealthy Predator and Reaper drones hardly ever get shot down. This RQ170 is clearly designed to be hard to see on radar; is reasonably fast, and quite small.

As others have said, it's not real until there are pictures.

OK, the Real Question We Should All be Asking

[LifesABeach]

What OS was the Drone flying?

Re:Hopefully

[WindBourne]

Yes, but the issue is, who is responding and who is provoking?

Iran is in a war with the sunnis and wants us out of there, and to retake/control the middle east. In addition, they want to push Shia over that of other forms of Islam.

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[WindBourne]

Nation building is NOT just politics. In fact, far from it. What we should have done is work with them to get businesses going and restore their economy. We did not. What you are speaking of, is political in-fighting which as you say, it a mess. However, if we had got their economy rolling and without taliban being their to gut these businesses (and for the first 5 years, taliban/AQ had next to zero influence), then W could have finished it. Sadly, between W, Cheney and rumsfeld, there really has been only a few more inept admins in America.

Re:Hopefully

[koan]

No the issue is your attitude.

Re:Nuke em

[WindBourne]

No. Overall, we do not. We put troops in prison for doing this. We are NOTHING like Iran. Now, I grant you that W/neo-cons were DISASTERS. But to declare that this is indicative of American overall is just plain wrong. What we did in invading Iraq was wrong. What we did in Abu Grave was wrong. And sadly, lower heads rolled, but not the ones who really caused it. We have some issues.

HOWEVER, it does not compare to what Iran is up to. Iran is meddling in every single nation in the middle east and more. Hell, Iran put a death sentence on a UK citizen for WRITING something. And you have NO ISSUE WITH IT? They just got caught attempting to assassinate a saudi political figure in America. And yet you and others point to America rather than them.

And yes, while we have our faults, we are nothing like Iran or their leaders.

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[shutdown -p now]

I hope you do realize that "Northern Alliance" that NATO has backed is, in political terms, quite literally an alliance of looters - warlords who live by extorting "protection money" from those who reside on territory that they control. You can say a lot of nasty things about Taliban which are entirely true, but that's one thing that they weren't. So there's no way to get economy rolling without fixing their politics (this, by the way, is broadly true - economics and politics are not independent anywhere in the world).

Well, there was one business venture that Taliban cracked down upon, and that has skyrocketed since the warlords took over: opium poppy growth and production of heroine.

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[WindBourne]

Actually, I do not know that much about Northern Alliance. I KNOW that there is loads of political infighting. However, when groups see the pot growing big, they will typically make arrangements to share.

And yeah, I am fully aware of the taliban's poppy. They prevent locals from using it, but sell it to the west as well as Russia, China, etc via Iran.
It it another terrorism attack on us.
The BEST thing that the west can do, is LEGALIZE all drugs, but require absolutely ZERO IMPORTS/EXPORTS. That would destroy gangs, drug lords, terrorists groups. Of course, to really make that effective we would have to crack down hard on any selling to underage as well as to fencing operations.

Re:yup, i think thats pretty clear from his commen

[shutdown -p now]

And yeah, I am fully aware of the taliban's poppy. They prevent locals from using it, but sell it to the west as well as Russia, China, etc via Iran.

Look up the history of it. They burned the fields and shot growers on sight, no ifs and buts, until NATO declared war on them. It took that to make them write a fatwa that "explained" that making heroine for infidels is jihad, rather than a sin punished by death (normally, it was treated same as alcohol and other intoxicating substances, on the grounds that Muhammad strictly prohibited wine) - to raise up cash for the war.

The BEST thing that the west can do, is LEGALIZE all drugs, but require absolutely ZERO IMPORTS/EXPORTS. That would destroy gangs, drug lords, terrorists groups. Of course, to really make that effective we would have to crack down hard on any selling to underage as well as to fencing operations.

Heroine that is made in Afghanistan goes most directly to Russia (via Tajikistan), and then to Eastern Europe.

Re:Nuke em

[Kyusaku Natsume]

In deaths and dissapeared we in Mexico have lost 100,000 in the last 5 years, but people in the USA barely blink for that despite they are the victims of a war fought on USA's behalf. The ATF provided thousands of weapons to drug cartels and we are still waiting when the americans will put at least behind bars the ones responsible. Latin America is littered with mass graves of the victims of US's aligned dictators that make Castro a saint in comparison. I don't have issue with americans in general, all the ones I have personally met are really nice people and even when I had to dealt with customs and TSA personnel they were nice and respectful. But people really need to press the brake pedal in their armed forces, the USA can't and shouldn't be trying to fix the world with bombs and bullets.

About the saudi assassination plot it was a complete fabrication that no sane person at this time believes, here in Mexico it became a source of jokes only. The main difference between USA and Iran is that the americans do most of their atrocities outside their borders and still have second thoughts against doing those atrocities against their own citizens, but the iranians don't have the same limitation, but at least they don't have their armed forces around the world.

This sucks because USA is a great place that could be far better if american citizens didn't let warmongers get their way every time they want to start a war.

Photos

[DirtyAmish]

Are there photos of it...them...a current newspaper...etc

Re:Nuke em

[WindBourne]

First off,l agree that you folks are bearing the brunt of our insane drug war, but also your own politics. I am opposed to both. Considering that we are neighbors, I believe that we should be working closer (for example, I would rather have seen all of our low-end work go to Mexico than to China. Far better to have your economy improve and work together then to send work to a nation that is in a cold war with America). But it is our drug war combined with illegals that is the real issues. We need to legalize drugs here, but allow ZERO IMPORTS/EXPORTS of drugs. If we then go after both gangs/drug lords while they are deprived of money, they will self destruct. And yes, America needs to get control of our illegal issue. Both are destroying America. And our drug war is destroying Latin America.

As to the assassination plot, I have seen stranger things. Things that I thought were jokes and turned out later not to be. So, do I trust it 100%? Nope. HOWEVER, do I discount it fully? Nope. Only a fool would do that. As it is, Iran has done a number of assassinations around the world.

Re:USB sticks

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

Didn't I see that strategy in an episode of JAG.

Yup. Pretty much.

[DarthVain]

Get the banner out...

Mission Accomplished! :)