[tanknetter]

I seriously doubt it automatically landed itself in enemy territory without also a self-destruct device being automatically detonated.

My take on the RQ-170 has been that it was a prototype/proof-of-concept placed into production and operational service as a stop-gap measure. Just like with the Predator. The lack of many well-known "stealthy" features - like faceted edges on access panels and the landing gear doors - would seem to support this.

Given that, it wouldn't be surprising if it either wasn't fully tricked-out with the latest/greatest features, or that it's systems didn't exactly work as advertised.

That RQ-170 in the picture (I'm taking the recent reports from the US DoD as accurate), then I do buy the story that it ran out of gas and passively "glided" to a landing that left it structurally intact - with the "soft" landing causing damage to the underside (masked by the Iranians by sitting it on a table) and shearing the wings off at their separation points from the main fuselage (crudely masked my the Iranians using duct tape)

[Cvengr]

Considering the first report on 4Dec indicated the aircraft was was from the DoD/ISAF, then on 6Dec the reports further clarified this was not an ISAF bird, but instead belonged to the CIA makes me wonder a little.

If a spare intel resource swapped between buddies, then it wouldn’t be surprising if it were held together with ‘baling wire’, and it actually might be the real McCoy.

Considering the lack of discipline from White House down on how to report the incident, I suspect they don’t know what the hell is going on.

Looks like an early variant of the bird that was operational. White House behavior is all too consistent with somebody who doesn’t have a clue, but knows that whatever the solution is it couldn’t be to defend American interests.