Yeah, like a flask of Absinthe for the pilot!
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 ...
***Perhaps it was supposed to be ‘captured’ intact. Bogus technology can throw off the enemy.***
Trojan eagle?
I thought of the same thing. The Wright Brothers technology.
Earth to DonnerT:
It is not infeasible to have two transmitters on board a drone, a more complex one to handle targeting, etc., a different one to blow a small piece of explosive.
... running off Microsoft Windows 2.0.
This is a political payoff to somebody. A nice way to betray our country. Thank you Barack Hussein Obama. I will personally water the flowers on your memorial, for this wonderful act of “diplomacy”.
I'm thinking the same thing. Surely there must be some kind of self-destruct mechanism.
Why not just program it to RTB? Dumb. Maybe there is a flashing blue light on top...
Why use a transmitter? It could just be an impact sensor , an accelerometer.
*** A ‘tamper’ triggered destruct would not require any communication. That would be most effective.***
If I were an Iranian I would only approach it after it quit smoking from the tank rounds I put into it.
Yeah, like a flask of Absinthe for the pilot!
I made the mistake of doing two shots of that once.
I lost four days and nights.
Toshiba though was caught, prosecuted, and got fined, and was bared from selling in the U.S. (for a period of time) for its theft of our technology. I believe that was about our submarine propeller silence secrets.
Yeah, it oughta have a self-eating mechanism, that could be called something like DonnerPass!
“That thing could still be sending information home.”
...maybe sending targeting information to a drone on its way to destroy the first drone.
It was.
The French facilitated it.
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