Posted on 12/05/2011 8:42:02 PM PST by traumer
A U.S. super-secret spy plane believed to be in Iranian possession could be a major loss for the U.S. military -- and a major gain for Iran.
According to a senior U.S. military source with intimate knowledge of the Sentinel drone, the aircraft likely "wandered" into Iranian air space after losing contact with its handlers and is presumed to be intact since it is programmed to fly level and find a place to land, rather than crashing.
"This is a big prize in terms of technology," a senior U.S. military source told Fox News. The spy plane uses the same stealth technology as the drone used to monitor the compound during the raid that killed Usama bin Laden, U.S. military sources told Fox News on Monday. Military sources confirmed that the Iranians have the RQ-170 drone, which is so advanced that the U.S. Air Force has not distributed even a photo of it. However, they did not say that the Iranians shot down the spy plane, as was reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency.
IRNA quoted an unidentified Iranian military official saying Sunday that the spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces and suffered minor damage.. The official also warned of strong and crushing response to any violations of the country's airspace by American drone aircraft.
Earlier, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan issued a statement saying the aircraft may have been a drone that operators lost contact with last week while it was flying a mission over neighboring western Afghanistan. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the incident, said the U.S. had "absolutely no indication" that the drone was shot down.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Ping.
And the Chinese will have it tomorrow.
A very high-tech stealth drone apparently
“is presumed to be intact since it is programmed to fly level and find a place to land, rather than crashing.”
*FACE PALM*
Perhaps it would’ve been more prudent to program it to self-destruct in the event of lost communications.
If they are so sensitive why don’t they have a destruct option?
Load that critical stuff with some thermite.
It would be much more efficient if it were programmed to fly directly to Beijing or Moscow.
I'm sure that someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea. But I'm thinking that once these things are actually deployed to parts of the world where there are bad guys it might, just maybe, be a good idea to have some way to oh....maybe...BLOW THE DAMNED THING UP!
and/or Russians....
Does it mean the Iranians have the electronic means to ‘hijack’ the plane and land it?
That just fills you with warm fuzzies, no?
So they can`t program it to use it`s path thus far to reverse course in case of signal loss??? Or maybe program it to return to coordinates in that event?? I guess they could auto-destruct in some cases...Somebody has some splainin` to do..and some changes to make.
total fail...
Question -
here we have a machine that can drop precision bomb on a target while being operated by someone on the other side of the world - why is there no ‘destruct’ button?????
Maybe just another “gift’ to out enemies from the Traitor in Chief?
Your right.
Ike, Reagan, even JFK would’ve demanded it back. Remember those days?
Perhaps it would’ve been more prudent to program it to self-destruct in the event of lost communications.
My thoughts, too.
my first thought too!
When Zero gets off his 17 day muslim vacation, he will apologize to the Iranians.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.