Official Confirms Authenticity of Iranian TV Images of Lost U.S. Drone

FoxNews.com ^ | 12/8/11 | Jennifer Griffin

[ColdOne]

A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that images aired by Iranian state television do in fact show the secret U.S. drone that went down last week in eastern Iran.

"Yep, that's it," the official told Fox News. "And it's intact."

U.S. officials had been expecting the video to appear. The footage comes after Iran claimed to have shot down the RQ-170 drone after it wandered into its airspace.

SNIP

One official told Fox News on Thursday that the incident is a huge loss and makes the top-secret helicopter tail lost during the Usama bin Laden raid in Pakistan "look like a pittance." The official said there are real fears the Iranians will share this technology with the Russians and the Chinese, in addition to using it themselves.

[TalonDJ]

A lot of armchair engineers out there seem to think all military hardware has some kind of bomb in it. They must watch too much scifi. I guess they also think that all technicians are trained at bomb disarming and disposal.

[DAC21]

Yep something smells. Congressional committee stat. That plane didn’t crash, it landed.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

A "covert coup"? Where'd they get that idea?

More likely, these were "defective" Chinese chips that handed it over.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Not ALL military hardware. Just the multi-billion dollar skunkworks projects that give us a 10 - 20 year advantage over our enemies.

If it didn’t have self-destruct capability, then why didn’t we dispatch aircraft to go destroy it in the air?

We are so screwed now with this Clinton redux.

[dadgum]

It has got to be a “Trojan Horse”.
Dear God, please let that be the case.

[TalonDJ]

Armchair engineer: These things should explode if anyone else gets their hands on it!

Real Engineer: Ok it costs 4 time as much now.
Armchair Engineer: What? Why!!

Real Engineer: We have to train all of our test engineers in bomb disposal and we have to build into the cost of development the five or six that are likely to blow up in the datalink debugging and control station testing.

Armchair Engineer: Oh… but can’t you make it only blow up if someone bad has it?

Real Engineer: Well we have not invented a ‘someone bad’ detector yet. We thought about using an IFF remote system but no one wants to go near it. If that part is faulty it will blow up on the runway. If you want to let us pay our technicians ten times their normal rate we can put that feature in

Armchair Engineer: Oh, maybe not. Well what about crashing itself if anything goes wrong.

Real Engineer: Do you have any idea how much ‘anything’ goes wrong during normal testing?

Armchair Engineer: Well don’t put that feature in until AFTER testing. Duh!

Real Engineer: Right… Well if you don’t want us to test that feature that is fine. Ok, we need ten million more in insurance money in case one decides to hit school later during training. I assume you don’t mind if it crashed into troops when it is in the field.

Armchair Engineer: Oh wait. No that is bad don’t do that.

Real Engineer: Ok how about we make it auto land if it gets low on fuel or loses navigation capability or is damaged.
Armchair Engineer: What? When war robots get damaged they are suppose to go crazy and kill people. Everyone one knows that!

Real Engineer: Go watch some more scifi and leave the engineering up to the professionals.

[mcshot]

We’re leaving all our best equipment behind when we leave Iraq. Now we give them our top secret drone in operational condition and they likely took over and landed it. Perhaps 0 should get in his well as time draws near. He sure isn’t working for the US.

[A CA Guy]

The thing was programed to fly itself and land at the first place it can if something goes wrong.
The autopilot was set to land, not self destruct and that is the problem.

[relee]

Yep, that’s what I was thinking too.

[Dallas59]

Probably a dummy. Great way to deliver a virus and tech that is now obsolete. Enemies start to copy the tech, we know exactly what they have. Meanwhile we deploy more advanced drones.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Pyrotechnic fasteners (aka “explosive bolts”) are used to ensure separation between rocket stages. Probably all booster stages are equipped with explosive charges so that the boosters can be destroyed if they go out of control on launch. Scuttle charges have been used widely on subs and ships. Gas generators are close cousins of pyrotechnic fasteners and are used to power turbopumps, inflate balloons, eject parachutes, and inflate automobile airbags. You are sitting in front of a pyro charge every time you drive your car.

People have been trained to safely work with all these devices.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

NASA Standard Detonator ("NSD") commonly used on frangible nuts. People in spaceflight operations are trained to work safely with NSDs.

[Paine in the Neck]

I’d like to think it’s crammed full of Stuxnet-type viruses just waiting for the Iranians to download.

[Londo Molari]

“Armchair Engineer”

Rockets and missles have self-destruct systems in case they go out of control. And, come to think of it, every time a fighter aircraft lands with a live AIM-120 AAMRAM or a Sidewinder, they are landing with a live “self-destruct” charge in the missile, right? You can handle the drone like you handle a missile.
A small warhead could have been installed during these type of high risk missions and removed for CONUS flights. Would this require more logisitics and training — yes, it would have. However, it could have safeguarded US technology.

[Vaquero]

Our Marxist, ‘Quisling in Chief’, pulls another boner.

[cynwoody]

There has been talk that it was hijacked by Russian Electronic Warfare equipment. If this is true, it would explain why it was not destroyed and that it landed intact. The Iranians were controlling the flight and landing.

If the Iranians did anything, it was probably to jam the drone's communication link to its pilot. To actually take over control, they would have had to break the encryption to start with, and that seems highly unlikely.

The question is, assuming the drone lost its pilot, what was it programmed to do? Ideally, it would be to return to base and self-destruct or dive into the ground if unable.

[TalonDJ]

There is a large difference between a nut that can go *bang* and a bomb large enough to destroy an entire aircraft. Not just shoot it down, but obliterate the technology. That is a pretty big bomb. The problem is not working with the bomb safely. The problem is that when you connect it to sensors specifically designed to make it blow if someone is working on it. If there is an easy (and safe) way to disarm it then there is no point in having it there in the first place because it will be easily defeated. NASA bolts and air bags are designed to NOT explode if you work on them. The same is true for air to air missiles, which someone else mentioned. Missiles and bolts cage be ‘safed’ by a technician because they are not designed specifically to blow technicians up.

Airbags are dangerous to work on and they are not even designed to explode if you work on them.

But even all that would have an engineering solution if there was a need for it. There isn't. The ‘self destruct’ on sensitive crashed planes is a 2 thousand pound bomb under an F-16. You lose a drone and you send the F-16 to bomb it. It is simple and saves a lot of development effort. The only weak spot of that system is the will of the president who has to order bombs dropped on another country.

There is no point in lugging around all the weight (drones already have a tiny payload) and risking maintainer's lives when you have a simple solution. The whole POINT of a drone is that they are less complex, cheaper, have long range, and don't risk anyone's life. If you put a big touchy bomb on each one you reduce every one of those benefits.