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 ...
Pernod is an absinthe I drank too much of at a bar in LeHavre, France, after a very rough crossing of the North Atlantic in the winter. Didn’t have enough money for a cab back to my ship, so I started walking. Next thing I remember was waking up in jail, and no body could speak English, and I couldn’t speak French.
Found out later I had walked onto the wrong ship, and where my cabin was on my ship was the location of that ship’s captain. I was told that I told that SOB to get out of my room! Lucky it was an American ship, and I only spent the night in jail.
No more absinthe for me.
Seems to me that there are way too many screwups lately.....and in a very short period of time.
Maybe they'll go peeking around at the computer programs and download some of that Stuxnet or Confinger or whatever.
Wonder if it was shot down?
We may never know...
A self destruct protocol is critical.
Gene Roddenberry got that. Why doesn’t the Pentagon?
“Why use a transmitter? It could just be an impact sensor , an accelerometer.”
I don’t recall saying that a transmitter was the only choice.
It was just a thought.
And you could disable the accelerometer with a relay via transmitter if you were landing it in friendly territory.
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