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1975, USS Hancock was a transpac-in. Stopped in Hawaii, loaded up a couple of Marine helo squads. Flight deck was filled with choppers. Couldn't launch a fly if we wanted to.

3 maybe 4 time on the way to PI, Russian Bears came down to take a look. Flew circles and took pictures for a good 45 minutes each. So close we could wave, shoot the bird, shoot the moon at each other. Ruskies laughed and flew away.

Point is, recon flights are common. Unless you want to start something, you let them be. Just don't fire up any of your equipment, and they go away empty handed.

But you better believe the Reagan knew when that sucker took off, where it took off from, eta and etd of the whole "secret" Iranian mission.

But you better believe the Reagan knew when that sucker took off, where it took off from, eta and etd of the whole "secret" Iranian mission.

Yup ... intelligence gathering is a two-way street. The Reagan and its strike group, by keeping nice and quiet and letting the Iranian UAV loiter overhead for a while, probably captured (passively) all sorts of good data on how the UAV works, Iranian operational procedures, tranmission freqs, etc. In return for all the information they had to give up to be able to claim a "win" in that press release, the Iranian's just got the kinds of data the rest of the world can download directly off of the picture pages at Navy.mil.