Apparently those on the ground wanted to destroy what was left but were overruled by someone who did not want to enflame the Iranians. What?
My thinking would have put a JDAM on target...whther wrecked or partially intact. And if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was already there, all the better. It's way past time we paid them back with large interest for killing US soldiers in Iraq in border incursions there.
We’ve already admitted that we are conducting UAV sorties over E Iran and the Iranians have been complaining.
The RQ-170 has an internal electronically armored homing ability to return it to base. This RQ-170 ran out of fuel, loitering over the target area.
We certainly could have cratered it with a JDAM, we would know it’s crash position because the RQ-170 would be pinging its GPS constantly, even after it went to ground. We can target and release JDAMs 35 miles up range from 35K+ altitude from any number of stealth aircraft.
Well, the color is wrong and the leading edge looks funny.
at .47 in the video you can see damage on front of the wing ,looks like cardboard or paper
My thinking would have equipped it with a self-destruct device to be activated after a known interval since the last contact. IOW, if it's real, we meant for them to find it.
Could it be that the Iranians forgot that the color of epoxy and fiberglass over foam isn't an official USAF camo color? Just a thought.
The model can be purchased on line for about $30.78. It would be a simple matter to scale it up from there.