Iran state television displays 'downed U.S. surveillance drone'
WATCH: Revolutionary Guard top officer tells Fars news agency that military experts are 'well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is.'
By Haaretz Tags: Iran threat IranIraninan state television displayed what it said was a downed U.S. surveillance drone on Thursday, days after U.S. officials expressed concern that Tehran would be able to glean information about a classified military program.
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Iranian military officials inspecting what they say is a U.S. drone, Dec. 8, 2011. |
| Photo by: Iran TV |
According to the semi-official Fars news agency, in the televised segment, commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Aerospace Forces Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iranian forces uncovered the aircraft as it was about "to infiltrate our country's airspace for spying missions."
"[A]fter it entered the Eastern parts of the country, this aircraft fell into the trap of our armed forces and was downed in Iran with minimum damage," Hajizadeh told Fars.
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According to the Iraninan military official, the drone was "equipped with highly advanced surveillance, data gathering, electronic communication and radar systems," saying that "this kind of plane has been designed to evade radar systems and from the view point of technology it is amongst the most recent types of advanced aircraft used by the U.S."
"The technology used in this aircraft had already been used in B2 and F35 planes," Hajizadeh added, saying the "aircraft is controlled and guided through satellite link and land stations in Afghanistan and the United States."
"Military experts are well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is," Fars quoted Hajizadeh as saying.
The RQ-170 has been used in Afghanistan for several years. U.S. officials acknowledge that the military lost control of one of the stealthy drones while it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan. The official IRNA news agency has said that Iran’s armed forces shot it down.
On Monday, U.S. military officials said that they were concerned that a stealthy surveillance drone that crashed in Iran could give Tehran the opportunity to glean information about the classified program.
But experts said Monday that even if the Iranians found parts of the unmanned spy plane, they will likely get little from it. And since it probably fell from a high altitude, there may be very few large pieces to examine.
U.S. officials have rejected that claim.
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Read this article in Hebrew: איראן טוענת: זה המל"ט שהופל
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why doesnt this thing have a gps traker? or multiple? then a missile could be designated the killer of each drone just in case... way to go guys who overengineered a model plane. My dog has a gps tracker in him...
This drone, as are most weapons systems, filled with chines manufactured chips. this drone did not crash, did not return to base autonomously or crash if unable as it is programmed to do, instead in landed near the largest iranian city in the area. All just coincidences.
will be pouring over this equipment and once again, the US has lost her technological edge. Last year it was a downed US aircraft.
This drone was downed through the hacking expertise of the Chinese government. Iran gets the credit, but China gets the technology. That is the arrangement. China obtained their knowledge when they hacked US government internal web sites 6 months ago. Military secrets are the most difficult to keep. This is a great example of that. Israel will be asked to clean this mess up before it is transported to China...
obama is happy they have it..
How ironic for U.S. and Israel, Stuxnet has been reversed engineered. (I know...don't tell me there were no thumb drives on this) but u get the point. Wait till China or Russia gets a hold of this. I would be worried for Israel and U.S. right now.
I seen no markings on the drone that says its from the U.S. If they disassemble it they would most likely find computer boards that say made in china
That's obviously not an actual drone.
no wonder united kingdom got kicked out.
Hopefully as soon as Ahmadinejad and Khamenei show up for a photo shoot, it will detonate, on camera.
It's a fake, front scoop is built wrong shape. spoilers are in the wrong place. leading edge not coated. rq170 is one piece construction. many other wrong things
The drone their showing is white. All our drones are black or dark grey. The drone that the Dumbasses are showing is fake. Get real people.
one of his different disguises. He is a Troyan horse in the shape of a drone, but actually dressed as Sutnex to cover up he is a Russian ballerina sleeping tonight with Ahmadinajad in order to find out if the Iranians are going to support his new invention of control (media, supreme court, dissidents). He is a real UFO
I also note, in the beginning of the piece that the Iranian fellow said "it was about "to infiltrate our country's airspace ....' " That means that it had not yet entered Iranian airspace which means that Iran violated another country's air space to get to this aircraft.
The military should use facsimiles whenever possible, that is, weapons systems with design flaws that can nonetheless be managed to fly. It would be funny to think of potential enemies using flawed plans to copy our weapon systems. At the very least keep the best stuff for when you really need it.
I wonder if drones were flying in US airspace how long it would take before they would be claiming that very point? P.S. How much could it be sold for to Russia or China?
Military secrets will always eventually be discovered. However, The U.S. will always have the best because we're richer due to our work ethic and free enterprise system. You whiners should try it sometime.
I don't think the USAF would get the # of stripes on their own drone wrong.
the one with the hajji writing hanging all over the hajji airport including the giant "tactical" one hanging from the wing? are you serious?
Actually, Palin never said that - It comes from a line read by Tina Fey in an SNL episode.
this should not happen just a little mistake, let us do better.
A few months ago it was reported that the North Koreans had jammed GPS signals. Undoubtedly, the foes of the US have developed sophisticated and effective counter-measures. With the largest military budget in the world, the US can't prevent a gamer from hijacking one of its biggest secrets.
What ever happened to having a simple self destruct mechanism should one get into the hands of the enemy. Come people we have been to the moon and back, now on our way to Mars again. What up?
Maybe we're waiting for Ahmadinejad and Khomeini to show up for a photo shoot.
The problem with all the high tech "secret" technology is that it will fail, it will be shot down and it will eventually find its ways into our enemy's hands. IE: the F117 shot down in kosovo, the "stealth" helicopter crash in May the spy plane that was forced to land in china (the island off of china) a few years ago and now this. This equipment will fetch a LOT of money on the military tech scene. as an example the new soviet T-90 tank that is modeled after our M1A1 Abrams tank, the new soviet stealth fighter the Sukhoi T-50 and the MI-28 'Havoc' helicopter. These systems really need some kind of high tech self - destruct system built into them to make it very difficult for our adversaries to get any info off of the wreckage. I know that is probably some James Bond fantasy system but with all the minds that dream up this stuff, I'm sure they could make something like that work...
I don't think this is the real deal. Notice how where the landing gear would be...is covered up. Why? They don't know what it looks like! Making it easier to debunk their claim if they had shown it with the landing gear! Get it!
Will Russia and/or China fabricate similar ones now soon, thus Iran and Hezballah will be able to use them too? Looks to me like a freak, UFO-hunter millionaire's air conditioner... But who am I to tell?
to screen the underside of the drone from view might indicate some damage from a hard landing. The fly-by-wire control must have worked to the last moment, because, the craft having no "natural" aerodynamic stability, otherwise it would have crashed. The idea that someone took over flight control and brought it down to land, but had no suitable runway and had to do with some flat ground with obstacles which damaged the belly part, appears plausible.
Which candidates for POTUS are the most giddy about giving this drone to Iran? Answer: Ron Paul, followed closely by the failed incumbent.
and thei israeli warmongering camp.
The US sent the drone into iran to be captured so that: 1-the iranian/chinese/russians will try and reverse engineer a fake while the real drones fly unseen above 2-it could have surveillance equipment that is tracking where the iranians take the device to be studied 3-and may even contain a large bomb to be detonated once the device is taken to a location of importance to study it. I assume all three.
1. Why US should have given anything in the first place? 2. They didn't need to go to such lengths for this. There are satellite for that. 3. I believe it would have exploded by now if that was the case!
....is done properly; all their drones will soon start landing here in the States!!!
Exactly my first thought. planted with old tech or something to throw the Chinese and Russians off track. You don't just lose this thing and say whoops.
Could they have ALLOWED it to be taken down in hopes of making it HARDER for israel to attack? I dont put anything past obama and his nefarious anti israel advisors.
It does not sound good for Israeli drone Israel beware.
Iran will reverse engineer the thing just they do with American, Russian, Korean and just about anybody else's technology they can get their hands on. Once they have done that they will try and develop their own version which although will be inferior to the original they will find uses for it. They will probably even arms their own one so they got their own little American based combat UAV. If America wants to stop this and the fiasco with the downed helicopter in Pakistan which has by now been passed onto China then it needs to start incorporating some kind of self destruct mechanism into any classified technology they would like to stay classified. It also means they don't risk the lives of special forces soldiers who they might want to send into enemy territory to capture or destroy the product the enemies now have.
soiunds lkike a good deal for Russia, do not you think so? LOL
Now, China has it.
Honestly, for propaganda to be effective it at LEAST has to be plausible. There are SO many problems with this video. The scale is horribly wrong, you can see the horrendous job they did connecting the "wings" to the body of this thing. A far more realistic piece of propganda would've been to attempt to show some "pieces" of the jet after "impact" ... not to show a mint condition airplane model with no concept of scale and almost no attention to detail other than the overall shape of the aircraft. Pathetic.
After all, once you down it the first priority is to get it outta there before the Americans can react. So you slice off the wings, shove it all into a truck, and haul it to a safe house. .....
but why you ignore the fact that the american admit the fact that they lost it
Where are the actual dimensions for this secret craft know-it-all?
But it is clear that they did not recover it completely intact. They are simply trying to over inflate their "capabilities." it is just too bad that the unintelligent masses believe all the bluster and give the Iranians far more credit than they deserve.
It obviously wasn't shot down. It's in perfect condition. So that means it was programmed to just land when it lost communication link (like I read in another article). Why didn't they design it to return to it's point of origin to land when it lost the link instead of landing in enemy territory to give enemies access tithe technology that billions of our tax dollars go to develop. Something doesn't seem right here. Either we really are that stupid, or someone purposely gave them this craft.
Does America have invading a sovreign nation's airspace in the first place?!
This drone reportedly was programmed to return to base in the event communication was lost with its controllers. Obviously, that system failed. I'm sure the CIA has had a few successes in recent years (beyond the Bin Laden hit) that we haven't heard of, but its failures and losses are piling up. This one is a doozy. Yep. China and Russia are already lining up to study it. But Israel shouldn't disparage the US for this failure. Israel provided advanced drones to Turkey and it's likely Syria and Iran have already gotten a peek at it. And they've provided access to Russia too, though not yet for its most advanced models.
This drone was electronically hijacked by the Iranians. Very doable these days.
(a reporter scrumming the Swiss representative who acts on the US behalf asked that question) And, given that that makes it pretty much impossible to believe the US story about where the drone was flying, and what it was doing, why give the rest of what it has to say on the matter (lost control, no classified technology/vital information) now in Iranian hands any credibility?
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They didn't think to add a self-destruct mechanism when they built this drone, huh?
I am very concerned about how it was 'downed.' I imagine the CIA is too.
The dimensions and everything are all wrong - the front is not even close to an actual RQ-170. See photos of actual on internet.
You are crazy for insulting the Iranian intellegence!
i am making fun of the situation but, it it did fall it did for a good reason i wont tell the reason because i would not want iranian to know it
No way this was shot down. It's nav software was hacked and it was flown down into Iranian airspace. An even scarier prospect for the US military.
Soon all the IP on this aircraft will be confiscated by the Regime and proclaimed as the indigenous genius of Iranian Regime scientists, as they claim with most other military developments of theirs. This incident is a big loss for the US but it doesn't represent all the stealth technology that comprises the cutting edge R&D currently being done in America. Dozens of previous flights have been made successfully over Iran to gather intelligence of this rogue regime.
They own it now.
these Airfix plastic kits have certainly come on.
Ha! They fell for it. That thing was loaded with so many computer virii they won't even be able to play a game of pong for the next decade.
Maybe a toy!
The US can reject the fact that Iran has the drone but they can not reject the fact that Iran is capable of shooting down the American drones. Either way, America loses, again.
It can be another Vietnam for Imperialist America.
The Iranians? Now there's a trust worthy source---NOT!
The USA government? Now there's a trust worthy source ---Not?
It would be Gulf War II, Iran dosent have the training the experience, the weapons, the support, or the Aircraft. In the end 10,000s dead iranians maybe 400 americans
wow i had no idea that drones were actually made out of yellow paper...amazing!
That could very well the the undercoating of primer paint that most aircraft get. It would make sense if the Iranians stripped the outer coating to see if it had radar absorbant properties.
The drone has gone down etc and American are worried about this but unfortunately some people do not have brain and make things up.
I doubt the Americans are worried that any sensitive technology has been lost. The RQ 170 doesn't have the radar absorbant paint or ducted exhaust to mask the IR signature. The radar might prove to be useful if the Iranians don't already have access to AESAs. More important, I would imagine, is the knowledge that an aircraft with a small radar cross section and flying at a relatively high altitude is vulnerable to Iranian AA weapons.
Someone hacked into US drone control transmission a year back. We may have a picture of the results at the top of the page.
Obviously includes electronic warfare, and has done since WW2 when strips of aluminium foil were dropped from bombers to scatter German radar. My point stands. Besides the fact that the drone clearly hasn't been damaged badly, it would have still required precision detection capable of spotting it, something which a SAM would also benefit from.
"And since it probably fell from a high altitude, there may be very few large pieces to examine." LOL
Exactly. It is in one large piece. An inherently unstable aircraft is not going to land intact if out of control.
How the Iranians managed to bring this bird down undamaged is beyond belief. The US "stealth drone" program is now officially DED.China and Russia will be partying tonight in Tehran with the massive information they'll be getting from this machine.Forget about B2 and F35..They're now useless in Iranian airspace..Israel shouldn't even think about using F15/16s as they'll appear bright red on the mullah's radar screen...
No big deal
The US is well aware these aircraft could end up in the wrong hands. For that reason, the Iranians, Chinese and Russians will gain little from this. Stealth technology is not new and started in the 1940's. The US even tried to take over where the Hitler regime failed to no avail. It wasn't until the 1980's when the US had the technological capability to make the stealth work. So party it up but US technology is still light years ahead of Iran. If they think this evens the playing field, they are in for a RUDE AWAKENING!
Whilst it may take years of R&D to come up with something groundbreaking, reverse engineering can be accomplished pretty quickly. If this is all genuine then Iran could well have these coming off the production line within a year.
If the enemy had the ability to bring this down and did it this early, they have shown their cards. That capability should have been saved for time of greater need. Now, it's apparent that there needs to be greater safeties employed and rest assured they will be before the program resumes. Too many assumptions here. WHo knows whether a rogue agent INSIDE the US military/CIA didn't guide this thing in???
Looks pretty intact for a drone that was shot down... hrm....
Its electronic and communication system was hacked and brought down.
There was that claim, but their lack of defense of stuxnet... I find it hard to believe they could hack into the controls of a drone if they could not prevent the stuxnet worm. I'm sure the signals to the drone are heavily encrypted.