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Iran's Military Claims To Have Downed US Surveillance Drone
mrquagmire submits a link to the Jerusalem Post's report that an American reconnaissance UAV has been captured by the Iranian military. "'Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran,' Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying. 'The spy drone, which has been downed with little damage, was seized by the Iranian armed forces.' ... 'The Iranian military's response to the American spy drone's violation of our airspace will not be limited to Iran's borders any more,' Iran's Arabic language Al Alam television quoted the military source as saying, without giving details."
Pics or it didn't happen.
I mean I thought the whole idea is you send in unmanned drones to do a dangerous mission because losing a drone is preferable to losing a pilot.(Then again you'd hope the technology on the drone wouldn't be too advanced so the enemy doesn't get much out of shooting one down.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
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.
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 . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Someone just blew up (at least) one of their missile bases. There are reports of more attacks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/image-shows-than-an-iranian-missile-site-was-destroyed/2011/11/28/gIQA7KZW5N_blog.html
Iran claimed it was an accident...
Course then the UK embassy then gets invaded and a drone is shot down. Or claimed. All a coincidence of course.
Deleted
Probably it has a full bag of USB sticks loaded with the latest SCADA worms lol
Now this is an interesting Trojan strategy - fly RC Planes, er, drones, around annoying foreign country. Have specialized Stuxnet-type software embedded in the plane. Have annoying foreign country shoot down RC plane and try to disassemble it to gain secrets.
ZAP! You've been pawned.
Wouldn't be all that hard. If this actually happened there are going to be dozens of people just aching to open the thing up. First one to find the JTAG connector wins a prize!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.)
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...
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
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.
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.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It was probably made in China.
why Iran has been taking the ones destroyed over iraq and afghanistan apart for years.
Indeed most of the technical hacks(like the discovery of taliban troops with tv's capable of receiving drone transmissions are done by iranians.
However Iran has several times in the past claimed to have shot down a drone in their airspace, and not once have they actually shown the crash site. just parts. Parts from drones shot down over other countries.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
... 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
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...
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
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.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So the CIA is not assassinating the religious fanatics who are making Iran shitty in the first place, but assassinating Iran's rational, secular thinkers?
RATIONAL secular thinkers would not be arming religious fanatics with nuclear weapons.
Scientists (engaged in nuclear research) are hard to grow.
Radical religious fanatics require no education, and can be recreated virtually overnight.
One would have thought that religious fanatics willing to blow them selves up would be just about exhausted and cleaned from the gene pool by now even in a depressing society with a horrible economy. Yet such is not the case. There is no point in taking out fanatics. You can't win that way. You need to turn them against each other, and remove any means of acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims, and attacking a Mosque was unthinkable. Now they are at each others throats and bombing each other's Mosques. ”Such subtlety . . . ” said Slartibartfast, ”one has to admire it.”.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yes, pulling up stuff from the 19th century is extremely relevant to this conversation about an unmanned aerial drone.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims, and attacking a Mosque was unthinkable.
Poppycock!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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), ...
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."
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...
It's also as though someone wants to prevent a full-out shooting or nuclear war. Israel is taking a more and more hostile stance towards Iran. There are stories leaking about how the Israelis are going to attack Iran without US permission. If you were the US, you have to talk the Israelis off the ledge. So what do you do? You have to do what you did in the First Gulf War to stop the Israelis from coming into the war: hunt Scuds and do other shit to show them that you're providing an alternative. Israeli isn't going to let Iran get nukes. They will do anything to stop that, including a shooting war. Crippling Iran's nuclear capabilities in a backdoor way (I mean, Stuxnet was awesome, right?!) delays that war.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
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.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC